


evidence

by orphan_account



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Eventual Sex, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:25:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4523718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitty finds a photo booth strip and almost doesn't recognize Jack because he's not sure he's ever seen him grin off-ice before, and his hair is so long it curls around his ears, and he's so, so young. It takes Bitty a few long seconds to realize the boy he's kissing is Kent Parson, with the same backwards cap and everything.</p><p>[alternate path to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4750046/">"touchy subject"</a>, objectively worse]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[four strong winds](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4386680)" by defcontwo made me think about kent and jack having photos together, and i've been thinking about how their previous relationship would affect present day with bitty. so!! this. there'll be more than one chapter.

It's almost midnight and Bitty bounces around his room after he puts the finishing touches on his last term paper of the spring semester. He prints it out on the small wireless printer under his desk—twelve pages, an awful, jumbled-up affair for a nutrition course he's taking as part of his science credit requirements—and stares at the neat APA title page on the stack his hands, and he can hardly believe it's done. Well, he can, because it's due tomorrow and he had better have it done.

But he doesn't have a stapler. He's made the mistake of bringing papers to lecture unstapled, thinking the professor would have one he could use, and when they didn't he had to run around campus in the five minutes before lecture started trying to find one. It was embarrassing, and this time, he's going to strike preemptively.

He tugs down the hem of the big shirt he sleeps in, some ugly Madison, Georgia tourist shirt his mama bought him before he left home, and steps into the hallway with his paper in hand. It's late, for Jack, but his door is still open a bit; leaving his door open is one of the cutest, subtlest "captain" things he does, like a guidance counsellor's "open door" policy: _I'm here if you need to talk_. Because it's Jack and you could have a better heart-to-heart with a stranger you flag down on the street, no one ever does, but it's sweet regardless.

Bitty knocks quietly. "Jack? Sorry to—" He sticks his head in past the door and Jack isn't there, but the door to the bathroom he shares with Shitty is closed and he can hear someone brushing their teeth.

He finds it hard to believe that after four years of post-secondary, Jack "I Get My Papers Done a Week In Advance" Zimmermann doesn't own a stapler, so he carefully pads into the room towards his desk, the lamp still on, Jack's laptop open to an article about religious tensions between Upper and Lower Canada in the 17th century. There's a half empty glass of water next to his laptop, a little jotted pad of notes and a couple stacked books, a few sticky notes stuck to the flat of his desk. It's all so normal. Bitty smiles to himself.

"Okay, okay, stapler. Hm." It's not on the desktop, so he opens one of the drawers. There's a pencil case and a container of thumb tacks, and Bitty lifts them out of the way to get to the back, because it's a deep drawer, and there are stray sheafs of paper and old receipts and—something a little glossy, and creased in the middle, like photo paper.

Bitty plucks it out from under the pencil case without thinking, expecting a postcard or family photo, but. It's a strip, not a rectangle. He turns it over.

It's a photo booth strip, four black and white photos that glow in a way that only photo booth pictures seem to. Bitty recognizes Jack instantly and it takes his breath away because he almost _doesn't_ recognize him, because he's smiling an honest-to-God grin, and he's not sure he's ever seen Jack grin off-ice before, and his hair is so long it curls around his ears, and he's so, so young, younger than Bitty is now. And he's next to someone else, equally as young or maybe even younger, and it takes Bitty a few long seconds to realize it's Kent Parson, with the same backwards cap and everything.

In the first photo, they're squished shoulder to shoulder and Kent's throwing a peace sign.

In the second one, Jack's got his arm around Kent's shoulders, his black t-shirt stretched around biceps that are frankly a lot smaller than they are now; all of Jack looks smaller by some degree, his jaw less wide, shoulders less sloped, all the differences between teenaged and twenty-four pronounced.

In the third one, Kent's pressing a kiss to Jack's cheek, squishing his face with his hand. Jack's got his own hand on the back of Kent's head up under his cap and dug into his shaggy hair, so blond it looks white without colour.

In the last one, Jack's turned his head and pushed back and they're kissing full on the mouth, Kent's ball cap off and crushed in Jack's hand, braced on the wall of the booth, Kent's arm squished awkwardly between them as he grabs onto Jack's jaw. You can see them smiling against each other's mouths, a sweet, goofy kiss for the camera.

Bitty can't breathe. His heart beats so hard it gives him a head rush, all the blood leaving his head for his tingling extremities. He shouldn't be looking at this. He really, really shouldn't have seen this.

The bathroom door creaks open.

He spins around, still holding the photo strip, to see Jack standing in the threshold in a t-shirt and boxer briefs. He looks at the open drawer and what's in Bitty's hand and Bitty can see the exact moment everything shatters in his head.

_"Bittle!"_

This isn't the loud, aggressive bark he got used to hearing from Jack, his captain, in freshman year. It's just as angry, but this is coming from Jack, his friend, and it's quieter but sharp-edged in its outrage and disbelief, which, Bitty is instantly sure, feels much, much worse.

"Jack," he says, dropping the photo strip on the desk as if not holding it will help. He brandishes his term paper like a shield. "I was, uh—a stapler—I don't—" 

Jack looks so impossibly shocked and betrayed that for maybe the first time ever, Bitty stops himself from babbling nervously. He doesn't think he could speak even if he wanted to, too many questions he has no right to ask lodged in his throat—everything from _this is Kent, isn't it? When was this? Were you dating?_ Are _you dating? Do you date boys?_ All the way to _is this why you're always sad?_

He knows if he doesn't say something now, he's never going to know; Jack won't bring it up again. But he also knows this can't be something Jack trusts him with, and it's going to be like before, where he sees something he shouldn't and Jack shuts down and doesn't speak to him until he's ready, and when he does it's not even about the thing. He can't offend Jack by asking, which would do him the complete disservice of suggesting that Bitty doesn't know him at least a little.

Jack comes towards him and he can't move. He flinches. Jack doesn't even brush by him as he picks up the photo strip, shoves it back in the drawer and slams it shut.

"Don't go through my things."

"Jack, I'm so—"

"Don't say a word to anyone."

"I won't!"

" _No one_. Not on the internet, not on the team, not _Shitty_ —"

"Jack," Bitty interrupts. He stops himself from reaching out and touching his arm because it feels like the right thing to do, but now is certainly not the time, and even if it were, him and Jack don't do that, not yet. Maybe after Bitty's had a few beer, Jack has let him press their arms together in a crowded space, nothing anyone couldn't deny (and Bitty's noticed), but beyond that, God. It's not like they hug. It's not like he's ever seen Jack touch anyone outside a celly on purpose, except, honestly, in those photos just now.

"I'm not—" Bitty searches for words, clutching his papers. "I won't ... you know I won't say anything, I would never, it's—lord, of everyone, you know _I_ won't."

It's subtle, but he watches Jack's face and Jack notices the implication, a flicker of recognition of the underlying _we're not so different, you and I_. Bitty doesn't know what to make of it, because he doesn't smile or frown any harder, and whatever he's feeling, if anything, is being felt on a level Bitty's not allowed to reach.

"I'm really sorry," he tries.

"It's okay."

"No, it's—I'm sorry, I'll go."

"Okay."

"Okay. Good. Um, I'll, I guess, see you at practice. G'night."

Jack doesn't say anything back that time. He's still standing awkwardly by his desk fiddling with the front of his t-shirt to have something to do with his hands when Bitty closes his door behind him.

 

 

Jack is awkward at practice the next morning during anything that isn't silently going through drills. He's awkward before they hit the ice and he's awkward afterwards when they're showering up, just in the way he won't make eye contact and anytime someone speaks to him he jumps like he wasn't expecting it. Bitty doesn't try. He wonders if anyone notices; he and Jack have been close lately, as much as anyone but Shitty can be close with Jack, letting their shoulders knock together as they walk to Faber, shoving each other, and Bitty would be lying if he said he didn't like it. But this morning, Jack walked up ahead.

 

 

Later, Bitty sits in class and thinks about Kent Parson. His thoughts oscillate from confusion (does this mean Jack identifies as something other than straight? Has anyone asked?) to anger (the way he heard Kent talk to Jack through his door, the one time Bitty met him) to sadness (did Jack get broken up with? What happened between them during his overdose?) to lust (the idea of Jack and Kent with their hands all over each other, now or then, God, anything).

He tunes out of lecture and types Kent's name into Google. It comes up with his stats page on NHL.com, news about his recent games, and, to Bitty's surprise, his Twitter. Bitty clicks.

His account is verified. He doesn't tweet about much, mostly sports things, bratty conversations with guys on his team and retweets of articles about himself (Bitty laughs). Sometimes he tweets normal life things: "accidentally dropped my phone and said 'sorry' out loud to it" and "if i had a dog i'd train them to look demurely away when you wink at them.” Bitty opens his media tab and it's mostly hockey shots, but sometimes it's photos of his little cat, or photos of him, taken by himself or people who look like his friends; at the beach, working out, partying. Kent's a shade paler than Bitty and impossibly blond, his hair that one step away from being actually curly so that it's always just messy-looking, always sticking up. He's got a strong jaw. By the looks of it, he's not much bigger than Bitty, and when Bitty recalls meeting him he remembers his shock at that, this NHL star being no more than a few inches taller than him, and slender. But then he remembers that _Men’s Health_ cover, and his toned abs and big arms, and he goes back to feeling bad about himself.

He seems happy, if not a little vapid, but Bitty doesn't know him. He's sure _he_ would sound stupid too, based on his Twitter alone.

In a moment of weakness, sure that Kent won't remember who he is, he follows him.

 

 

When Bitty's in line at Annie's three hours later, he gets a notification that @kentparson has favourited his months-old tweet about Jack leaping over a snowbank to ask him to coffee. Then: @kentparson followed you back!

 

 

Jack's weird for a couple more days, and then he's back to normal, but not the "normal" he'd been getting to with Bitty recently, with the smiling and the honest conversations and the shoulder nudges. Bitty notices that's missing. Jack says his normal good mornings and good nights and they talk about hockey, but he's guarded and stiff, and Bitty wants to say, _I don't care who you've been with and I'm not going to tell anyone_ , but he doesn't know how. There's no way that seems appropriate.

 

 

They win their game on Friday and Jack scores twice and it's the first time Bitty's seen him smile all week. He's sure everyone can tell that something's up between them—Shitty tried to ask about it yesterday but Bitty insisted he didn't know anything—but they throw a party because they don't think it matters to Jack either way.

Bitty doesn't drink much because he's worried it'll make him brave enough to say something to Jack, but he got an assist on one of Jack's goals so the guys make him do a keg stand. 

 

 

He didn't see where Jack left to, but he has a pretty good idea. He creeps up the stairs, away from the hot press of bodies in the kitchen and living room, not sure how Ransom and Holster always get so many people to come to their sloppy parties on short notice, not sure _who_ is picking the music because it's some impressively awful dubstep—but he _is_ sure that he isn't unacceptably drunk, and sure that he needs to talk to Jack. He doesn't have to say anything, exactly, just ... present himself, as a friend, on the off chance that Jack would want to talk about his feelings. He can't imagine anything being so unlikely, but at least this way he can go back downstairs and get drunk to make himself feel better if it goes badly.

He remembers Jack's soft sigh the last time he tried to check in with him post-Kent, during practice at the frozen-over pond, their fist bump afterwards. That had been okay, but that was admittedly different. Now he knows that there's probably this entire confusing framework of feelings that go with Kent Parson, and he tries not to think about what he and Jack might have been doing behind that door, other than arguing. Bitty can't remember if he heard any long, suspicious pauses.

 

 

Jack's door is technically open, but the door's touching the frame. He raps softly. "Jack?"

"Come in."

Jack's at his desk in jeans and a sweatshirt and socked feet, which is absurdly, unfairly cute. His hair is damp from a recent shower that Bitty can smell through the open bathroom door, Old Spice and American Crew. Not that he's checked. His laptop is shut and he has a book open.

"Hi," Bitty says, and feels dumb, because they live together. Something about ‘hi’ seems trite.

Jack sort of smiles. "Hey."

"Not downstairs?"

"Nah. Not tonight."

"Yeah. Makes sense. It's, um. Busy." Bitty takes a cautious step over the threshold and shuts the door behind him. "Reading for class?"

Jack shakes his head and turns his book over, hand keeping his page. "Regular reading, actually. My mom lent it to me."

"Oh. That's nice." He doesn't want to make the kind of small talk required to ask about the book, because Jack knows that he knows that Jack knows that he doesn't read, or not like Jack does, taking on big novels for fun.

Bitty stands there for a few long moments, wringing his hands. Now that Jack's looking at him, he isn't so sure about his sobriety. He keeps thinking about Jack and Kent in ways he feels guilty about, the thought of Jack being with another man too much to handle. And his imagination goes rampant thinking about Kent being small and blond like how _he's_ small and blond.

Jack blinks at him. "Are you alright?"

"What? Yes."

"Do you ... want to sit?" Jack gestures awkwardly at the bed after realizing that's the only other seat. For reasons Bitty isn't sure of, he says, “Oh, sure,” and perches on the edge of Jack's bed.

Jack spins around in his chair, scuffs his feet on the floor. He still has his hand in his book. Like a good host, he asks, "Do you need anything? Or ..."

"No!" Bitty says quickly. "No, I—I don't know what I'm ..."

"You can just sit, if you want," Jack offers, not quite looking at him. "It's loud out there."

"Oh. Sure." Bitty slumps a little, tugs at the sleeves of his shirt and tries to smile. This is nice, this has to be a good thing. At least Jack's looking him in the eye again. "Thanks."

Jack nods and opens his book and leans back in his chair. Bitty scoots until his back is against the wall, and Jack's bed is so big his feet don't hang off the end, even sitting sideways. He can hear the music from downstairs pumping through the floor, but it's quieter here, like Jack's room learned silence from him. Bitty pulls his phone out and scrolls through Twitter and listens to Jack turn pages every so often.

Kent favourited something he tweeted earlier today about winning their game.

He goes through Kent's Twitter again, seeing what he's said. Nothing of consequence; the Aces won their last game, too. It's so tempting to send him a DM about Jack and ask _him_ the hundreds of questions bubbling up inside him, because Jack said "don't say a word to anyone," and that could mean about him and Kent, in which case talking to Kent himself wouldn't matter, or he could have meant "don't tell anyone that you saw," in which case it would. Both are a stretch, he knows, so he doesn't message Kent. He puts his phone down on the bedspread and closes his eyes. He stops being able to hear Jack turn pages.

 

 

He isn't sure how long he sits there for, maybe twenty minutes or maybe an hour. He almost falls asleep, because the room is warm and quiet and Jack's bed smells like Jack, and he has silly schoolboy fantasies about falling asleep here and Jack letting him stay, climbing into bed next to him.

He jumps when Jack suddenly speaks.

"Sorry I've been weird."

"What?" Bitty opens his eyes. "No, don't apologize, you've got nothing ... it was my fault. I shouldn't have ..." He trails off because they both know how the sentence ends.

Jack doesn't say anything for a long time, but he puts his book on his desk and clasps his hands between his knees. Bitty watches him, eyes tracking over his frown, his throat, his big arms hidden under his sweatshirt. He doesn't expect to get anything else out of him, but then he goes on. He doesn't look up.

"I kept them because I don't remember."

Bitty raises his eyebrows. "I'm sorry?"

"I kept those photos because I don't remember being there, taking them." Jack rubs his neck. "It was a month before the draft, and I was just, like ... high, and numb, all the time. I don't even remember where we were."

Bitty gasps a soft, devastated breath and Jack's sad, quickly-spoken words ring in his ears, _I don't remember being there_. The teenage Jack in those photos, with his big smile and a cute boy under his arm, must have hardly known what was going on.

"Oh, Jack."

"I just ..." His hands ball into fists. "I look happy. I don't know. It's a reminder, I guess. That I missed something, because of how I was."

"Jack, that's—" The saddest thing he's ever heard. "How long were you ... like that?"

Jack shrugs, and for a second his eyes flick to Bitty's and Bitty's run through by the intimacy of it, even though they're a room apart.

"For six months, ish, I'd just—if I wasn't on the ice, I'd up my dosage. 'Til nothing was anything, 'cause it was just. A lot. All of it." He looks up again, then back down. "Or. Did you mean Parse?"

Parse. Bitty remembers now, vividly, Jack's quiet voice through wood and drywall, _Kenny_. In retrospect, he should have known.

"Both, I suppose." Bitty looks down at his feet. "I'm sorry, you don't have to—"

"No, no, it's—whatever." He waves his hand. "That lasted ... longer."

He doesn't say anything else. Bitty doesn't press him, but he wants to say, _I figured_. If the kiss in the photo booth had been a one-time thing or something else easy to explain, he would have explained it. His silence means a lot more, an unspoken "it's complicated," maybe an entire relationship; Bitty's mind reels at the idea of Jack having feelings for anyone, let alone Kent Parson.

If Jack were anyone else he might get up and hug him, because he's never heard Jack talk about his substance abuse, and he only knows about it in bits and pieces through others, and that one time in the bar when SportsCenter was on and Jack looked like he was going to shatter into a thousand pieces. He never thought he'd hear anything right from Jack.

"It's not like I look at them," Jack says. Bitty looks up. "The photos," he adds.

"Oh! No. Yeah, I ..." He fiddles with his hands. "Are you and him still, um."

_"No,"_ Jack says, firmly. He looks less sad than before, more embarrassed. "That's—we were kids."

"Oh." Bitty hears: _it was a phase._ Hope he wouldn't have admitted to having dislodges itself from the uncomfortable, private centre of his being where thoughts about Jack go, and falls away.

"Well, I mean ... too much happened, and he's—and I'm here, and it wouldn't ... it's not good. Or, it wouldn't be. I don't know." Jack stops and runs both hands over his face and, from behind them, laughs weakly. "I'm being awkward, aren't I?"

"No!" Bitty yelps. "Please, it's fine, I'm glad you're—you never talk about yourself, I don't mind, it's nice. I get it." Jack looks up at him then, and he almost doesn't keep talking. "Not about, um, drugs, but the other stuff. I know what it's like to—" Then it's his turn to laugh, and he looks down. "God, what am I saying, I've never even _dated_ anyone. Never mind, I'm sorry. I have no idea what you're going through. Or, went through, I guess."

Jack says, "It's okay," and it's startlingly soft. "I wouldn't want you to."

They both look up at the same time. Again, it's ... intense. A little intimate. Jack's chair has rolled marginally closer to the bed. Bitty isn't sure if he's reading anything into this but he wants so much; he wants Jack to be surprised that he hasn't dated anyone, he wants to slide smoothly into some controlled, adult conversation where he asks _so does this mean you're single_ and Jack comes and sits on the bed and they kiss, suddenly, and it's perfect, but neither of them move, and somehow Bitty can't speak. He keeps thinking about a young Jack taking pills with shaking hands, telling Kent everything is fine. Did Kent used to yell at him then, the way he did when he was here?

"How old were you?" Bitty asks. "In those."

"I think eighteen."

"Oh." Bitty smiles. "Your hair was long."

"Yeah." Jack kind of smiles too, like he's more grateful than anything for the release of tension. "I got it cut when I started here. I look like a little kid when it's long."

Bitty says, "It was cute," before he thinks better of it, and he can feel his ears get hot. But Jack just smiles at him.

"Sure, Bittle."

It's embarrassing, but he likes it. It's a good kind of embarrassed, Jack chirping him, like he's recognizing Bitty's awkward half-flirting without entirely saying no. Or maybe Bitty's just imagining it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are a lot of really cute perfect stories about jack and bitty getting together, and i've done that too, but i want this fic to be like ... how awkward can i possibly make this.
> 
>  
> 
> @ [tumblr](http://ronibravo.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitty is absolutely sober when he decides to DM Kent Parson.

Bitty has a dream about Kent Parson and it's weird. He thinks it's Kent, in that vague dreamlike way where you just have feelings, and you can't put anyone's face together specifically. They're somewhere crowded, an amusement park or a mall, and Jack is there. He knows it's Jack because he can feel his arm pressing into his shoulder at the exact height Jack's does, below his bicep, and he has that bubbly excited feeling in his chest like he does when he's around Jack, and he knows it's Kent because—well, he doesn't know why, he just does. They're being ushered along in a crowd and he hears Jack laugh, and there's pressure at the small of his back, a hand, and Kent says, "Get your shit together, Zimms," and then he lifts Bitty's hand and presses his shiny white cellphone into his palm, fingers looped around his wrist. "Here," he says, face closer to his than Jack's is, with their height. "Do it."

 

  

Bitty wakes up with a jolt, the dream already slipping through his fingers. He's dreamt about Jack before, in infinitely more embarrassing situations, but somehow the presence of Kent, whom Bitty doesn't even _know_ , seems like a step too far.

It's still early. He pulls on shorts and a t-shirt and leaves for a run because the weather is beautiful and he needs to get out of the house.

He can hardly believe the difference being on the Samwell team has made for his athleticism, as much by Jack's strict team workout regime as Ransom and Holster chirping him for how little he could bench press in freshman year. He had always liked running, but his cardio was never very good, and it was so hot and dry in Georgia that he had to get up at impossible hours to beat the heat and actually enjoy himself. It's easy in Massachusetts, where they actually have four seasons and summer doesn't start until June, like it's supposed to.

He likes running because it's cathartic, being left alone with nothing but your thoughts, your music and something to do with your body. It's nice, even if his thoughts drift to Jack today, as they usually do; watching him last night, his clasped hands, his small voice, his admission. Bitty doesn't think he's ever thought of anything as sad as a young, promising athlete being so high on anti-anxiety medication that he doesn't remember taking sweet photo booth pictures with the boy he's seeing—who is also, if he remembers what Shitty said the one time they spoke about Kent, his best friend. It hurts more that it's Jack, who tries so hard and still blames himself for everything, who's so genuinely kind but at the same time, so hard to read, and dark, who just wants—Bitty doesn't know what Jack wants, really. To play hockey, he figures. To stay clean.

But he kept those photos of him and Kent, so does that mean he wants something else? Their relationship must have been romantic. You can't fool around with your best friend and _not_ have feelings for them, they're your best friend. Would Jack want that again, with anyone? Bitty wants to say he can't imagine anyone fitting into the life of practices and games and travel and training that Jack is going to build for himself post-Samwell, but he sort of can. And he sort of has already, lots of times, and it's _him_. 

He's not clingy, he's his own person. Jack could be gone a lot. They could have their own lives, and be together when they could, and it would work. Splitting a closet and a chest of drawers in an apartment with a nice kitchen and a giant bed and bay windows. Snapchats from airports. Long weekends in Montreal. A Falconers t-shirt in Bitty's size with ZIMMERMANN on the back.

Bitty shakes his head and slows his run to a halt, stumbling, and bows in half, out of breath. His hands shake with dehydration and exhaustion and he braces them on his knees.

He's so embarrassed that he thinks about this stuff, a life with Jack without Jack's consent. It feels like a violation of trust between friends and teammates—Jack's going about his day, confiding in him about some of the worst, most vulnerable parts of himself, and he's painting this sickly sweet future where Jack skypes him sitting cross-legged on hotel room beds and tells him he misses him. He knows it's not his fault that he likes Jack, but some remnants of locker-room bro-code make it seem dishonest.

 

He starts running again and his chest burns. XO by Beyoncé comes up on shuffle and he skips it.

 

When he gets back to the Haus, Jack is just locking the front door. Bitty stops jogging when he hits the front walk, as if his red face and sweat will go away in the three seconds it's going to take him to reach Jack. He smooths his hair down at the back where he knows it's sticking up from sleep.

"Hi," he says, breathless, as he meets him halfway through the yard. They stop in front of each other and Bitty plucks at his shirt where it sticks to his chest, thinks about the wisps of that dream he remembers, having Jack and Kent pressed to each of his sides.

"Hey," Jack says back, completely normal, and Bitty's surprised. He looks right at him and everything. He's wearing a blue hoodie and he looks bright and awake and clean. "Good run?"

"Yeah. Went—" Bitty takes a deep breath. "—Went a bit too hard, don't know what I was—thinking."

Jack smiles and says, "Have eggs for breakfast, then. You've gotta build muscle," and it's light, teasing, and he bumps his arm into Bitty's as he steps by him. 

Bitty can hardly believe it. He watches Jack's retreating back and sputters, "I'm building _plenty_ of muscle, thank you very _much_!" and he wants to yell, _who are you and what have you done with Jack Zimmermann?_

 

 

After his shower, he tweets, _If Jack doesn't stop telling me to eat protein, I'm going to get disgustingly ripped this summer and see how he likes THAT._

 

He's in line at the dining hall later, grudgingly scooping eggs, when Kent Parson favourites the tweet.

 

 

The idea of Jack not being straight throws Bitty for a loop. If he isn't straight, then does he know that Bitty isn't? Bitty told Ransom, Shitty and Holster, and that's everyone in the Haus _but_ Jack, because he expected it would slowly get to him and the rest of the team—after a point, he didn't care that they knew, but he didn't want some awkward confession where he sat them down and told them, especially not with Jack. 

So, Bitty reasons, if Jack knows he likes guys and _Jack_ likes guys, then they're just two guys, who like guys, who live together, who are definitely not dating each other. That means the ball has been in Jack's court longer than Bitty knew there was any ball to speak of.

Which, whatever. Bitty's fine with that. Jack being straight was just one of the many inevitable things that meant him and Jack are never going to be together; Jack's a famous athlete, soon to be a professional famous athlete. His dad is beyond wealthy. Jack’s going to be independently wealthy himself. His body is going to be insured for more than any house Bitty will ever live in. He's over six feet tall, and his biceps are as big as Bitty's neck. There are photos of his butt on Tumblr. Jack being straight was definitely only _one_ reason Bitty didn't think it would happen, and with that out of the way, the situation is almost sadder: before, he wasn't in the running, but now he is, and he's losing.

He tries not to think about it. Jack's being nice to him, their team's doing well, and he has about a month and a half left of Jack living across the hall, of having breakfast with him and seeing him walk from his room to the laundry room in his boxers on Wednesday nights, and that's honestly more than he could have asked for, anyways.

 

 

Jack is ... not the Jack that Bitty would have expected to get after an intimate conversation like the one they had. He doesn't shrink away and get quiet like he did _before_ they'd talked about it, after Bitty found the photos. He becomes very, very present. He's around more, and he's sweet, and Bitty doesn't know if the sweetness is being directed at him or the entire team as some last-semester nostalgia. 

Bitty tries not to think about it.

 

 

When Bitty's in the living room losing a half-drunk Mario Kart tournament against Dex, Nursey and Chowder, Jack comes home from class and perches on the arm of the couch next to him and talks, chirps them without playing himself, takes sips of Bitty's beer when he's offered them. When he eventually retreats upstairs, Dex pauses the game and looks at Bitty. "What the hell was _that?"_

Bitty looks up the now-empty staircase. "I'm ... not completely sure."

 

 

This goes on. Jack, loitering in the kitchen while Bitty bakes. Jack, taking a break from working on his thesis project by walking to Annie's with Bitty, then grabbing dinner afterwards because _why not_ , he said. Jack, sitting on Bitty's bed quizzing him for an upcoming exam. Jack intentionally messing his hair up at least three times more than normal.

 

 

The next week, Bitty sits at the kitchen table with his laptop, trying to get help on a term paper from Shitty. He just got back from the library, still at a loss, and he's still got his coat and a hat on.

"I don't know how I'm gonna do this, Shitty," he says, miserably. "I just—I've got a page and a half left and I have absolutely nothing to say, I mean _nothing_."

"Shh, it's okay, you've got this." Shitty claps his hands down on his shoulders. "You're trying to be academic about this, which is, okay, one way of looking at it. But you're still a sophomore, and you need to like—bullshit. You need to bro this paper into submission."

"What?"

"Okay, here." Shitty reaches up, takes Bitty's baseball cap off and spins it backwards. "Okay, and, just a sec." He disappears for a moment and Bitty hears the fridge behind him, and when he comes back he presses a cold can of beer into Bitty's hand. "There. Now you're in full _bro_ , because no one's better at bullshitting than bros. So gun that beer, sit down, and try to think of a page and a half of smart-sounding bullshit that might get you a B-minus."

Bitty laughs. "Shitty, it's like, noon, I can't—"

"Listen to your elders and shotgun that beer!"

Bitty doesn't shotgun the beer, but he does open it, sit down and start working, rephrasing previous statements to sound like new facts to jumble together into a conclusion. Shitty sits across from him with his own laptop and books and they chat back and forth, and he's gotten another paragraph done by the time he hears the front door open. He hears someone come into the kitchen behind him, and he knows by the silence and the time of day that it must be Jack. He turns around in his chair.

"Hi, Jack! How—"

Jack sees him and drops his water bottle. He's staring at Bitty, wide-eyed, at the beer in his hand and the mop of blond hair tucked under a backwards cap.

Oh.

Bitty clues in and rips the hat off, trying to remember a time he felt so supremely awkward and it wasn't related to Jack. Is he blushing? 

Shitty cackles. "Alright there, Jazzy? That's gonna roll under the fridge in a second."

Jack sticks his foot out and stops the roll of the water bottle across the linoleum in their old, sloping house. He stoops and picks it up, then looks at Bitty and laughs, and it's not a bad laugh, but it's funny, incredulous, and aimed more at himself than anything.

"Yeah, I'm alright." Jack laughs again, eyes still on Bitty, and Shitty looks at him like he's insane. "God. Never mind. I'm good."

 

 

Bitty is absolutely sober when he decides to DM Kent Parson.

 

 

He's on a bus back from city centre, where he went to a fancy grocery store to find hemp hearts, which neither of the (frankly, poorly stocked) on-campus Stop-n-Shops carry, and Kent favourites a tweet he made about Jack watching him play Smash Bros with Shitty and asking whether Jigglypuff was a boy or a girl.

He stares down at the notification, Kent's little face next to his name. Jack's been different lately. Bitty can't talk to Shitty, who is kind and smart, but too close to the situation; it would put him in an awkward position. And who would know more about Jack than Kent Parson?

He opens Kent's profile, then the direct messages tab, and taps out _hi_. He stares at it for so long that he almost misses his stop, and as he stumbles off he bus with his grocery bags, he hits send.

It's late on a weekday and it's a quiet walk through campus. He takes a small, satisfied kind of pride in knowing that this time last year, he would have struggled to carry grocery bags this heavy, but now they're nothing, and it feels good.

His phone buzzes in his pocket as he turns onto frat row, and he fishes it out.

_@kentparson has messaged you: hey sup_

He doesn't know what to say to that. He maneuvers his keys out and lets himself into the Haus, and gets greeted loudly by Shitty, Holster, Chowder and Nursey, all piled onto the couch watching TV. Jack is behind them, holding a mug and leaning on the back of the couch, obviously passing through.

"Our little man!" Shitty hollers. "Put that shit down and come watch Dogs With Jobs with us right now, it's so fucking great."

"These guys are just, totally doing the best they can. It's amazing."

Bitty laughs, clucks his tongue at Chowder and Nursey. "You boys don't live here, and it's end of semester. Don't you have papers, or projects ..."

Chowder extracts his limbs from where they're trapped between Nursey and the arm of the couch. "Bitty, oh my God, though, this black lab, right? She could predict when her owner, who had epilepsy, was gonna have a seizure!! How amazing is that? I can't do that! I'm not as smart as that dog!"

"Don't sell yourself short," Jack says from behind the couch, and noogies Chowder. He comes around the side of the couch towards Bitty and smiles. "Here, give."

"I was just thinking about how I'm proud of myself for being able to carry these, look!" He does bicep curls with one of the bags. "Eh? Boys?"

"Real proud of you, Bits," Holster agrees.

"You'd do better if you didn't have a death grip on your phone." Jack lifts the grocery bag out of the inside of his arm and carries it to the kitchen. "Who're you texting?"

"Uh, Bitty doesn't have other friends, Jack," Shitty calls after them. "That would be _rude_."

Bitty laughs and pointedly ignores Jack's question.

 

Later, after the groceries have been put away and he has watched fifteen minutes of Dogs With Jobs, he retreats upstairs. He washes his face, brushes his teeth and climbs into bed, and in the dark, he opens Twitter. He has no idea what time zone Kent is in, but it doesn't matter because Twitter, even direct messaging, is pretty unobtrusive as far as communication goes. Bitty types a reply.

_Nothing, just wanted to say hi. We only sort of met._

Surprisingly, it's only a minute before Kent replies.

_yeah and now we're twitter buddies apparently_

_Sure looks like it. Is this a good time, i don't want to bother you_

_nah it's cool im out. but if this is how i find out some bad news about Zimms im gonna be pissed though_

_no! No, he's fine. Good health, etc._

_alright but this IS about him isn't it? little late in the eve to be asking about hockey._

Bitty hesitates. He didn't have a game plan going into this, he just knew that he wanted to say something, but what? In retrospect, asking someone's ex about them is maybe the worst thing a person could do. Before he can think of a reply, Kent sends one.

_ok well that's a definite yes, and cool whatever but if this is what i think it is I don't want this shit on my phone. incriminating, &c_

Bitty can't believe he's so open about it, even saying that much. What else could that mean?

_Sorry, that makes sense._

_yeah, just being smart. wanna go for coffee or some shit_

Bitty blinks at his screen in the dark.

_Where ARE you?_

_NY but i can be wherever. off season. $$. you know_

_What, you'd fly here? Why would you do that?_

_honestly i like the scenery and i wanna see where you're going with this, is that good enough_

_If you're sure you don't mind ..._

_np it might be funny. is j gonna be there?_

_Uh. Not unless you want him to be._

_nonono just checking. w/e, give me your number ill text you when i've got a date_

Bitty does, along with another awkward thank you, his body buzzing in disbelief. He's going for coffee with Kent Parson, leading scorer in the NHL, Stanley Cup winner and Jack Zimmermann's secret ex-boyfriend.

He's just nodding off when his phone lights up again. It's a text from an unknown number.

_hey it's kent. btw are you hitting on me or_

A laugh escapes Bitty.

_ Not especially. _

_ok cool just checking. ttyl_

 

 

Kent gets back to him in a few days and they set a date for the following Thursday in Boston. Bitty doesn't know what to wear. He goes with a t-shirt over anything dapper or cute—because if Kent is even remotely like Jack, he wants to minimize the number of things he might be chirped for—and the weather is nice enough that he doesn't need a sweater. He tells the Haus via group chat that he won't be home until later (and gets accused of going on a date) and gets on a bus into Boston listening to the most confidence-boosting music he can think of, and tries to figure out what he's going to say to Kent. If he even shows up.

He waits at the downtown corner they agreed on and scrolls through Twitter. He tweets, _It's weird tweeting about someone when you're sure they're going to see it._ Then, _Anyways, I think I'm doing something stupid._

After two more minutes, Kent, of course, favourites that tweet, and Bitty thinks wryly about the wordless chirping opportunities Twitter affords.

Another minute after that, just when Bitty thinks this was all a big misunderstanding, Kent comes around the corner, and Bitty doesn't want to be star struck but he sort of is. Kent's wearing a crisp white t-shirt, shorts and no hat. He's a little taller than Bitty remembered, maybe half a head taller than him, not that that's saying much. And Bitty just thinks, in the same way he does about Jack, that _so_ many people know who Kent is. He's famous. He's been on the cover of magazines. He won the Stanley Cup. That's easy to forget when you're joking around on Twitter and hard to forget when they're standing in front of you. Bitty jams one hand in his pocket and offers the other to Kent, awkwardly.

"Hi." They shake hands.

Kent's smiling at him and it's not necessarily nice, but it's not malicious. It's amused. He's not bad looking. He doesn't have Jack's cheekbones, but he's got these pretty green-grey-blue eyes, a nice mouth, bright skin. Bitty instantly feels inadequate, too small and too soft.

"Hey. Sorry I'm late."

"No, no, it's fine, I just got here." Bitty looks around and rubs his arm. "Where, um, do you want to go?"

"I think there's a sports bar down the street."

Great. Bitty looks down. "Uh, I'm underage."

Kent raises his eyebrows, then catches himself. He shrugs. "Let's try. No one gets ID'd with me."

They start off down the sidewalk and Bitty says, "You hang out with a lot of underaged folks?" and Kent boggles at him.

"Aren't you fuckin' brazen? We've known each other for two minutes and you're throwing accusations."

"Just saying."

"Real nice," Kent gripes, but he's smiling, and Bitty ticks a mental victory, a levelled playing field.

They get to the sports bar and it's pitch black inside and smells like fry oil so Kent asks to be seated on the patio. As they settle into two high chairs around a black bar table, Bitty asks, "Aren't you worried about getting noticed? This is a pretty ... hockey-loving city."

Kent shrugs. "Not really. People know the name and number, but like, how many people could pick Sidney Crosby out of a lineup?"

Bitty nods. "Right." It's not like he's an actor, he's not famous for his face.

But then their server comes up and looks Kent in the eyes for a couple seconds too long. He sets down glasses of water and drink menus and disappears again, and Bitty hides his hands under the table so he can fidget without being noticed. He's sitting across from one of the most famous hockey players out there. And they're about to talk about a boy.

"What year are you in at Samwell?" Kent asks without looking up from the menu.

"Sophomore," he says, and Kent glances up at him, then back down.

"How old _are_ you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Twenty in May."

Kent clicks his tongue, smirks at his menu. "Right."

Bitty blushes, sensing an underlying train of thought, and thinks _God, this is so embarrassing, he must know exactly why I'm here._ A little boy with a crush.

"What's your major?"

"American Studies, I think, but I haven't declared."

Kent hums a one-syllable reply and folds up his menu, lays it on the table. Bitty puts his down, too. He looks at Kent and doesn't know him well enough to tell if he's tense, but he's sitting up very straight. They must look a little ridiculous together, two awkward young men so obviously unaccustomed to being in each other's company.

The waiter comes back. "So, you gentlemen looking to get some drinks?"

"Yeah," Kent says. "Can I get a glass of the porter?"

"And I'll just have a Heineken, please."

The waiter's eyes track over Bitty's face. "Could I see some ID?"

Kent laughs, short, sharp, and a bit bratty. "Oh, c'mon."

The waiter looks at him, at first angry and then, suddenly, surprised.

"You're not—Kent Parson?"

Kent smiles. "Yep!"

"Man, I've been trying to figure out if it's you this whole time." He shakes Kent's hand, hard. "That's—this is so cool, man, congrats on the cup."

"Thanks, man, that means a lot."

"You're—yeah! You're welcome! What brings you to Boston? I've never seen you around before."

"Visiting a friend," he says coolly, gesturing at Bitty.

"Right! Cool, dude, yeah. I'll be right back with your drinks—is it—would it be weird if I got you to sign something for me? My buddies are big fans, they're gonna flip."

"Yeah, no problem," Kent says, all chill and crooked smile, and the waiter leaves. Kent grins at Bitty. "See? Simple."

"Impressively manipulative."

"Oh, whatever. It's a sports bar, I knew he'd know. It's not like I whip that out at the Cactus Club."

"I bet."

They sit in awkward silence for a few long seconds, Bitty watching Kent watching him, his eyes flicking from his own to down his chest to his arms. It's tense. It's not entirely uncomfortable, but it's weird, because they both know that they're waiting to talk about what they're waiting to talk about, which is definitely Jack.

The waiter comes back with their drinks and gets Kent to sign three different pieces of receipt paper; he asks for a photo and Kent says yes but adds, "Don't tag me in anything."

Bitty drinks, grateful for the soothing potential of non-sobriety, and tries to figure out how he's going to phrase what he came here to ask without incriminating or insulting Kent. Or himself.

The waiter leaves and Kent laughs and pushes his hair back. "Dudes are so weird. It's _so_ weird to have these guys, like, way older than me, talking about how they're my _fans_ and shit. Fucking bizarre."

"You're a pretty big deal now," Bitty says, a little more teasing than he meant it to be.

"I guess. It still feels so weird." He takes a drink, keeping his eyes on Bitty. "Aaaand, speaking of weird. What's up?"

This is it. Bitty looks into the dark of the bar, over the side of the patio into the street, as people pass by on the sidewalk. "Um. I don't know. I feel stupid asking you to just—out of the blue."

"Well, you did, and I said yes, so I guess we're both stupid."

"Yeah." Bitty plays with the label on his beer and tries not to peel it off. "It's ... about Jack."

"I figured." Kent tips his head. "Not to be super paranoid, but if this is—let's not use his name. Fanboy McSportsBar might be hovering."

"Right, yeah. Sorry."

Kent shakes his head, gestures like _go on._

"Yeah. Um. About him. I ... it's ... a touchy subject."

"Always is."

"Yeah. So, without ... incriminating anybody, or saying what each of us does or doesn't know about a certain someone's past, um, relationships, let's assume we are both talking about the same thing we both know about ... him."

Kent's eyebrows rise. He makes a wordless motion with his hand, a flick of fingers between himself and an unseen other, Jack.

"Yeah," Bitty confirms.

"How in the fuck do _you_ know about that? Not to be a dick or anything."

Bitty's glad he thinks of _not_ telling Kent about the photos before it's too late. Learning your ex still has photos you took together when you were eighteen and they were in the throes of a pretty serious drug addiction is a lot of information, none of which Kent should hear coming from Bitty. But on that note, who knows what kind of memorabilia Kent kept.

When Bitty doesn't say anything, Kent asks, "Did he tell you?"

"Something like that."

"Hm." Kent leans back in his chair. "Weird."

Bitty doesn't say anything. Yeah, it was extremely weird. It continues to be.

Kent clears his throat. "Please tell me he didn't send you to talk to me or some shit, because that would be _beyond_ fucked."

"No!" Bitty says quickly. "He doesn't even know I'm here. This isn't ... it's not about that."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not here to, I don't know, grill you about him, or how you two—" Bitty stops when Kent makes a face that says _shut up_. "Anyways. I'm not. That's what's so stupid, I guess, because technically ..." He folds his hands in his lap. "I'm asking for advice?"

"Oh my God," Kent says right away, and holds up his hand for Bitty to stop. He downs the entire second half of his beer before coming up for air, then points accusingly at Bitty's half full bottle. "Finish that. I'm getting another. We're not talking about this sober."

"Oh, uh, I don't really have the money to—"

"Are you joking? It's on me."

Bitty catches himself before he smiles. He wishes he didn't need or want to drink to have this conversation, but it would help. So he finishes his beer and lets Kent buy him another one from the excitable waiter and tries not to think about how it's late afternoon on a Thursday and he shouldn't be drinking because they're going to chirp him into next week if he comes home drunk.

Kent leans forward with his chin in his hand. He got Bitty the same beer he was drinking before, so black it's nearly opaque. It's not seasonable, but it's good.

"You're asking me for advice. About ..."

"Kind of."

"What, you like him?"

"... Kind of."

Kent snorts. "You made his ex take one of those weird one-hour flights to come talk to you about him, I'm gonna venture you don't mean that lukewarm _kind of_."

Bitty flushes. "Whatever!"

"Hey, no, I'm not passing judgement. Trust me, I get it."

Bitty sinks back. He's sure that if anyone actually _does_ get it, it would have to be Kent. "Okay."

"So, what do you actually want? Tips on how to _woo_ him? 'Cause I've got some bad news for you, I'm not exactly qualified in that department anymore."

Bitty accidentally laughs and Kent glares at him and says, "It's not like I'm not _looking_ to be."

"I know, I know." Bitty drinks. "That wasn't a shot at you."

"Believe it or not, some of us have moved past the point in our lives where everything revolves around ... big Canadian boys."

Bitty laughs into his beer. "Oh my God."

"But you haven't," Kent says slowly. "I'm guessing."

"Um. Not exactly." Bitty tries to shrug like he doesn't care. "He graduates in two months, and then he'll be God knows where, so it's not like it really matters."

"Hey, you never know. _You_ must think it matters."

"Maybe." Bitty draws in the water on the tabletop from the condensation from his beer. "So, no, not asking for wooing advice, just ... wondering ... how I might know if he ... liked me?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You are—the weirdest kid I've ever met."

"I said I was sorry! I know it's stupid, I just, well, he's been weird lately but it's kind of a good weird, and I don't know how I'm supposed to tell if it's _that_ or something else, and I ..." He runs out of steam. "I figured you'd have ... experience in this field. Maybe."

"Give me a minute." Kent sighs and runs his hands down his face. "God, this is weird."

"I know."

"Do you? 'Cause, like—you get how badly this could've gone, right? How do you even know I'm _over_ him?"

Bitty freezes. "Uh—I just—"

"I mean, I am, but God, can you imagine? I'd flip the table and tell you to stay away from my man or some shit? You're fucking lucky."

"I'm really sorry."

"No, no, whatever, it's actually fine." He lowers his voice. "We were eighteen. If I weren't over it by now, I'd have bigger problems than _you_." He pauses. "Well. Over it to a degree. You never ... never mind."

Neither of them say anything after that. Bitty thinks about the photo booth strip again. He chooses to trust Jack's reasons for keeping it. He plays with his hands under the table.

"Well," he starts. "You'd be the only person who knows what Ja—what he's like when he's, you know. Into somebody."

Kent laughs, and Bitty isn't going to say anything about how bitter it sounds. "You'd think so, huh."

"Hm?"

Kent pauses to drink; he's gone through more of his beer than Bitty has.

"I don't know if anything I know is gonna be helpful. We didn't—" Again he lowers his voice, puts his elbows on the table. "It's not like he asked me out. Or vice versa."

"So what happened?"

"We just—ugh, fuck, I might as well." He downs the rest of his beer. "We were like seventeen, or he was. We were in my billet family's basement, we were fighting, and I made some bitchy comment about his dad, and I thought he was gonna crack me in the jaw but he—did something else. If you know what I mean. Almost broke my fucking nose."

He can't believe he's privy to this information, Jack's first kiss with Kent fucking Parson, or maybe with _anyone_ , who knows? He can see it in his mind's eye, the shaggy-haired Jack from the photos with his smile and little arms, his teeth clacking with Kent's, all fire and brimstone.

"Christ," he says.

"Yeah. So, I don't know. I didn't _know_ before that, so I don't know if he acted different. He didn't exactly court me. It was all, uh, sloppy." He puts his chin in his hand. "You realize that you and I know completely different versions of him, right? Like, to compare whoever you know to the snarly little kid _I_ fucked is pretty much—"

He stops; Bitty's mind loops again and again on _I fucked, I fucked_ , like a glitchy video, a skipping record, and his face blooms with heat.

Kent's looking at something over his shoulder, his face gone blank. "Oh my fuck, that's not—"

"What?" Bitty panics, worries he's remembered something bad.

"He's here. We can't— _oh God he saw me."_

Bitty turns around in his seat and comes face to face with Jack Zimmermann, standing on the sidewalk beyond the patio, looking pretty petrified, wearing his nice clothes.

"Bittle?"

It's the same sort of tone he used when he caught Bitty with the photos, but less mad and more terribly, terribly confused, with that same accusatory bite.

"Jack!" Bitty says, two octaves too high. "What are you doing here?"

He watches Jack look at the bottles and glasses on the table behind him and at what must be Kent, because he makes a weird kind of face. "Meeting with Georgia," he says slowly. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Nothing!" Bitty says, way too quickly, and realizes, way, _way_ too late, that to someone who knows them, this must look exactly like he's on a date. With Kent Parson. At a greasy sports bar. "Totally nothing, we were just—"

"Hey, Parse." Jack looks beyond Bitty with his jaw set, voice cold as anything. "What are you doing here?" he says again.

Kent says, "Ab-so-lutely nothing," in this smug fucking tone, and when Bitty turns around he sees him smirking at Jack.

"You're not helping!" he cries, and turns back to Jack. "I know what you're—it is not in _any way_ what you're thinking, I'm not—"

"He was asking about hockey stuff," Kent says lightly. "Obviously."

Bitty wants to say something in agreement but he's not good at lying on the fly so he sits there all tense and guilty, staring at Jack who's staring at Kent like he wants him to burst into flames, which Bitty tries not to find flattering.

Jack moves his jaw back and forth. "I'm gonna be late. I'll talk to you later." Bitty's pretty sure that's directed at him. Jack takes off down the street again and almost crosses a crosswalk during a green light.

Bitty whips his phone out and quickly texts, _JACK I AM NOT DATING KENT PARSON._

Kent starts laughing. "Of fucking course he shows up, right? Christ."

Bitty put his phone back in his pocket but after a couple seconds it starts vibrating like he's getting a call, and he pulls it out expecting to see Jack, but it's—everyone else.

He texted their group chat instead of just Jack.

_?????????????????_

_OH MY FUCKING GOD BITTY *WHAT*_

_LOOOOOOOOLLLL_

_u sure bits????? u absolutely sure about that??_

_!!?? WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU RIGHT NOW_

_HAHAHAHAHA BITS YOURE SO FUCKED_

_lmao holy shit_

_TELL HIM CHOWDER SAYS HI!!!!!!!!!!_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tuuumblr](http://ronibravo.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitty's got more going on than whether Jack Zimmermann has a crush on him or not. Even if it doesn't always feel like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is sort of bumpy, but enjoy!! thanks again for the kind words. id appreciate it if you didn't correct any hockey stuff i might have gotten wrong or whatever! it's just. not a big deal.

 

 

After Jack left, Kent had looked Bitty in the eye and said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure he likes you."

 

 

Bitty thinks about that all the way back to Samwell.

 

 

When Jack comes back from his meeting later, he corners Bitty in the kitchen before he even takes his shoes off.

"You're not, right?"

"No!" Bitty says quickly. "Oh my God, Jack, no, and I didn't mean to text the whole team, and _please_ believe that I would never, ever date a friend's—"

Jack has the same _shut up_ face as Kent.

"—Well, I know you two don't exactly get along anymore, so I would never ..." He laughs awkwardly, putting his hands up. "Also, um, totally not my type, anyways! I mean, that's not to say, uh—he looks fine, that's not a dig at anyone who _did_ date him, or wants to, I just—"

"Bittle."

"—and, well, he's so famous, and a professional athlete, and there's no way he'd date _me_ , right, I mean, it's a non-issue, it's actually not even—"

"What were you doing, then?" Jack interrupts. He doesn't look mad, exactly, just confused. Shitty always said not to bring Kent up in front of Jack, and Bitty wonders if that rule still stands now that Bitty knows what happened between them; maybe that makes it worse.

"Um." Bitty remembers the story he rehearsed with Kent after Jack left. He doesn't want to lie, but he's sure the truth—his big, glaring crush on Jack—would be even harder for him to handle. "It ... it wasn't hockey stuff."

Jack stiffens. "Oh."

"It was ... he just wanted to talk to me to ask about you. He wanted to make sure you're doing okay, and wanted to see if I knew which team you'd signed with. So, I guess it kind of was hockey stuff, but it was more _you_ stuff."

"Oh," Jack says again, looking more uncomfortable than he had when he thought they were on a date.

"Because—well, you aren't on the best terms, and I guess it was a little nosy of him, but he meant well and I didn't know how to say no. And, I know I shouldn't have gone because I shouldn't talk about you behind your back, but I didn't know until I was already there, and I didn't really tell him anything?"

"Thanks."

"Definitely not a date," Bitty tries to joke, and Jack smiles. Bitty holds his breath. He wants to hear, _I'm sure there are plenty of professional athletes who would date you, Bitty. I can think of one, specifically. It's me, and I love you._ And then rose petals would fall from the ceiling and Barry White would start playing, and—

"If you say that one more time I'm gonna start doubting you, Bittle," Jack says instead. "Doth protest too much."

Bitty feels his ears get hot. "Oh, shush." He turns back to the pie crust he was rolling out and shakes his rolling pin at Jack. "Don't tempt me. I'll date my way through your whole friend group just to spite you."

Jack laughs. "Not that I don't think you could do it, but we have the same friends and it would be awkward for you, too."

" _Shush!_ Out of my kitchen!"

 

 

Any time Jack isn't around, the boys chirp Bitty mercilessly about his sexy new boyfriend Kent Parson. When Jack _is_ around, they make kissy faces at Bitty when Jack's not looking. Shitty and Lardo print out a photo of Kent, frame it, and leave it on Bitty's pillow. Bitty tacks the photo to Shitty's cork board and keeps the frame.

 

He texts Kent, _Not to be weird, but all my roommates think I'm dating you._

_lmao too good. how's j feel about that_

_Honestly, he's pretty surly._

_that's probably a good thing_

 

 

Bitty tells himself he has other things to worry about, and he does. He's falling behind in his classes and their first playoff game is coming up, and the Spring Concert isn't until the end of April but he still doesn't know what he's going to wear, and anyways, he's got more going on than whether Jack Zimmermann has a crush on him or not. Even if it doesn't always feel like it.

Jack keeps being in his space, roughhousing, loitering, getting coffee. Bitty's nerves wear down. He buzzes with the most teenaged brand of hope and every day is _what was that? Did he mean to do that?_ and trying to map every Jack-related interaction into a 'he loves me, he loves me not' pattern of certainty, because if he's going to say something, he needs to be sure. But they're in the playoffs and they're actually doing well, and Jack is both tense and in a good mood at the same time. It's weird, and Bitty doesn't know what to attribute to hockey-nerves and what to attribute to a potential crush on him, if anything. Jack seems happy but he's a little clumsy, a little weird in a way Bitty can't pin down. 

Not knowing how Jack feels about him is stressful, but knowing, and having it be a _no_ , would be worse.

 

 

 

Bitty's on Jack's line for their home game against Harvard. They're all vibrating with nervousness in the locker room minutes before they go out and Jack's talking to them but Bitty's ears are rushing with static, fear of messing up, fear of Jack, fear of himself, and the thought that this is going to be one of the last games they ever play together. Jack keeps looking at him, or at least he thinks he does, and he has no idea what that means.

"We're the better team," Jack says with finality. "So. Let's make sure that shows."

"Yeah!" Ransom barks. "Fuck those stuck-up rich kids."

"Just playing devil's advocate here, but our team captain is literally a famous millionaire. Just saying."

"Don't be a bringdown, Shits."

 

 

Bitty tries to get his gloved hands to stop shaking as they skate out, tries to clear the static from his head and blink out the bright lights. He doesn't want to let anyone down, doesn't want to ruin the game, or anything with Jack, and kind of wants it all to be over. He doesn't know why he's so nervous. There are more people in their stands than he remembers there ever being before and it's louder, it feels deafening.

Coach Hall's giving them a pep talk. And Jack is looking at him again.

"Jack?"

He looks down, shakes his head. Bitty bumps their shoulders together and hopes it helps, but he _knows_ this is something about letting him down, he thinks he can't do this, he's disappointed, _something_ , and his heart sinks. He doesn't know what's going on.

 

Jack misses an easy shot in the second period and Bitty swears that the entire arena collectively gasps. And then he does the same thing a couple minutes later. Coach Hall calls a time out.

 

They skate to the bench and Coach Hall gets halfway through his _Jack, what the fuck_ before Jack pulls his helmet off.

"Bittle." He nods towards empty ice. "C'mere."

Bitty's heart beats so hard he gets a head rush. "What—"

"Just. One sec."

Jack skates a few paces away and Bitty's legs feel weak, Coach Hall is yelling, the boys are shouting, but he follows Jack out of earshot. The other team is huddled by their bench and everyone's looking at the two of them, off on their own. Jack's holding his helmet and his hair is sticking to his forehead and he's flushed and so tall on skates and Bitty can't breathe. He starts apologizing before Jack can get a word out, sure that this is because of something he's done, rushed and babbling.

"I'm so sorry, I don't know what—"

"Would it be okay if I had feelings for you?"

 

Bitty's ears pop. Like getting off an airplane. Like plummeting fifty feet. Everything goes quiet.

 

He wants to take his helmet off. He wants to sit down right on the ice. Jack is breathing hard, waiting, looking down at him. It's surreal. 

"I—" _I'm having a heart attack. This is a dream. I'm already dead._ "I don't—that would be— _amazing_ , Jack, but _what on earth_ —"

"Great." Jack smiles, claps him on the shoulder and says, "Talk later," then jams his helmet on and skates back to the bench.

Bitty hyperventilates.

 

He plays for another minute and flubs two passes, then Coach Hall benches him and he sits next to Shitty. He won't take his eyes off Jack.

"What was _that_?" Shitty asks, shaking Bitty's knee. "What'd he say?"

Bitty's mouth is still dry. "Um. Hockey stuff."

"We're in the middle of a fucking game, Bits, I assumed hockey stuff. What, was he like, 'please, Bitty, start sucking at everything so I look better?' 'Cause—"

The buzzer sounds. Jack scored. Holster knocks into him so hard that he almost falls over, and from this distance, Bitty's probably imagining that he can see him looking in his direction.

 

 

They win 2-1 and get to play Denver U next week. Bitty keeps his eyes on the floor in the locker room after, more steadfast than usual, which is saying something. He's caught between lingering behind to try and grab a second with Jack or rushing ahead so he can lock himself in his room and scream into his pillow.

That was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to him. It must have been a misunderstanding. There's something he doesn't get, a hockey thing, a rut thing, but he keeps seeing Jack saying it over and over again, feelings for you, talk later. Feelings for you. Feelings for you. His bright, wild eyes, sweaty hair, helmet clutched in his gloved hands. Jack can't be so unaware that he'd say something like that in _any_ situation other than meaning it, right? Even for hockey? He can't imagine in what way saying that would have helped him play.

Bitty picks rushing home. He showers up, changes and speed-walks back to the Haus alone, and no one stops him.

 

 

Shitty bumps into Jack's bare shoulder while they're getting dressed, a few minutes after Bitty bolted from the locker room without saying anything to anyone.

"What'd you say to Bits, bro? He was weird on the bench. And he bat-outta-helled just now."

Jack pulls his t-shirt on and almost elbows Shitty in the head. "Nothing."

"Hockey stuff?"

"Not really."

Shitty squints at him. "Bits said it was hockey stuff."

"Oh." Jack runs his hands through his wet hair. "Hockey stuff, then."

"Jack. Your mysterious heartthrob bullshit doesn't work on me, and you know it."

"Ask me later," he says honestly, and hauls his bag onto his shoulder. "Better catch up with him."

"Oh, no you don't." Ransom catches the strap of his duffle bag. "We're walking back together like the well-oiled machine we are. Like a parade through the streets, gracing everyone with our combined presence."

 

 

 

Bitty makes it home before anyone else and sits spinning in his desk chair, going through their group chat.

_so, hot young hockey gods, who thinks we can put a rager together in the next 3 hrs worthy of our own greatness???_

_ME!!! I DO!!!!!_

_LETS DO IT_

_as if im not already making a fb event for it. cmon boys_

_everyones gotta invite their whole friend list I don't care where you're from_

_THIS IS GONNA BE SICK WHO WANTS TO DO A BEER RUN WITH ME_

_SHOTTTIIIIIE_

Jack doesn't say anything about the idea of a party, not that he would. Bitty throws his phone on his bed and changes into a sweatshirt and jeans, and resists the urge to call his mom, aching, once again, over the idea that he can't talk to her about this facet of his life. He wonders if Jack is out to his parents. He never thought to ask.

 

 

Bitty doesn't know why he's still impressed by the number of people, all of them ready to dance and get wasted, that one hockey team can get together with such short notice. By nine, the house is already getting full. Bitty hasn't heard from Jack, but he also hasn't really left his room because he knows the boys will rope him into helping with the worst party preparations. Definitely not because he's being a coward about Jack. Definitely not because he wants to stay in the beautiful limbo where he's allowed believe that Jack meant it, about having feelings for him, where no one can tell him otherwise, and where the cruel hammer of reality can't smack him on the head and bring him back down to earth.

He thinks, _well, he would have at least texted me_ , until he remembers it's Jack.

 

 

Ransom and Holster bang on his door and manhandle him downstairs some time later, but not before calling him "our favourite lil' fuck-up," which makes him laugh despite himself. Before he can tear away from the two pairs of hands on his shoulders, he's in the same room as Jack, across the kitchen from him, and Jack looks as surprised by it as he does.

Holster says, "Beer's in the fridge, Bits, help yourself," and Ransom smacks him on the back, and then they leave, and Bitty's glad there are so many other people in the room or it might be even more awkward.

He has no idea what to do with his hands. Jack's still looking at him with his mouth pressed into a line and Bitty can't read his expression; surprised, maybe guilty? He hopes it's not guilty.

"Hi," he says, and Bitty says, "hi," back, and that's all he had planned as far as conversation goes. Jack changed after the game and he's wearing a plaid flannel and a white t-shirt and might actually look better than normal, if that were in any way possible. Something about winning a game makes him glow.

After what feels like an eternity, Bitty manages a step towards him. "Um. About earlier ..."

"Yeah," Jack sighs, "I wanted to—"

"Jacky boy!" Shitty yells, barreling through the kitchen door. He gets his arm around Jack's waist before Bitty can blink. "C'mon, we're gonna need a speech."

"Shits, no, I'm busy—"

"Two words!" Shitty begs. "Morale 'n' shit, we're in the fuckin' playoffs, it'll mean a lot to the frogs!"

Jack sags into him, a sign of defeat. He drops his arm over Shitty's shoulders and gives Bitty a long look. "I'll be right back."

Bitty ducks his head. "Okay."

"I mean it."

Bitty nods and Shitty gives him a weird look before ushering Jack into the living room, shouting _pay attention! We got a speaker!_

Nursey comes up behind him and says, "Wow, it's like he's _actively_ trying to cockblock you," and Bitty elbows him in the gut.

 

Nursey ends up grabbing him a beer despite his protests so Bitty hangs with him and Dex and Chowder in a corner of the living room, and he loses Jack somewhere or Jack loses him. He tries not to think about it. It gets busy and Bitty doesn't feel like dancing and he can't find Jack, and he can't talk to Shitty or Lardo about this and it would be awkward with the frogs, and he can't tell his mom, not like this, not yet, and he sure as fuck isn't calling Kent Parson, so he chats awkwardly with anyone who starts talking to him, about hockey and football and nothing in particular. 

He takes a lesson from Jack and tries to escape to his room, and is edging along the hallway for the stairs when through the kitchen door he sees—Jack. A little taller than anyone around, looking right at him, with maybe a dozen people packed into the space between them.

"Jack," Bitty tries, but it's loud and crowded. Jack gets it, and mouths something and points at the ceiling; upstairs. Bitty sidles along the wall and makes for the stairs, and he waits at the top for a few moments before Jack makes it out of the mass of people at the bottom.

"Wow," he says when he gets to the landing. "That thing is really out of hand."

"No kidding," Bitty says, but he's just thinking about earlier, the idea of limbo, the idea of running into his room and postponing this and writing Mr. Eric Richard Zimmermann in his notes in pink gel pen because he's being a baby, and talking means a chance to be let down, and he's suddenly really, really afraid. "Y'all are too popular for your own good."

"They're not here for me," Jack scoffs. He looks down at Bitty and rubs his neck. "Uh. Wanna ..." He gestures weakly at his room and Bitty's heart thumps wildly in his chest.

"Sure."

 

Jack thinks: _he looks exactly how I feel._

Bitty twists his hands and Jack shuts the door behind them, and music still comes up through the floor. Nervousness is emanating off Bitty in waves.

Jack's been working out what to say in his head all night, carefully picking each word, but now that they're finally alone, he says, "My dad says hi."

"Huh?"

"He called after the game. He told me to tell you he says hi."

"Oh." Bitty's still standing by the door; Jack takes a few steps in but doesn't sit. "Well, tell him I say hi, too."

"I will."

He's sure that this is the longest and most tense silence that has ever stretched between two people alone in the same room. Bitty's looking at him like he thinks he's going to attack. Jack clears his throat.

"About earlier."

"Right, you said, uh. Feelings?"

"Yeah. I ... I'm sorry for saying it on the ice. It was distracting me, and I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I knew I needed to force myself to say something, or I'd never ..." He trails off, feeling stupid. His palms start to sweat. 

"And what," Bitty says slowly, "were you saying, exactly?"

He was wrong. This silence is ten times more awkward than the last one. There's no adult way to say _like_ that isn't _love_ , and that's really big, too big, so he says, "I'm interested in you," all at once, and Bitty's eyes go wide.

"Oh. You mean, like ..."

"You said 'amazing,' when I said it earlier, did that mean you—"

"I like you, too." Bitty's smile is a bit wobbly. "I thought you knew that."

"No." Jack's heart beats so loudly he can hear it in his ears. "I didn't want to assume, just because we're both ..."

"Why wouldn't I?"

Jack looks down. God, he thinks, there are so many reasons. "You're just—you're so nice, to everyone, and you're ... open, or whatever, and I'm always mean, and I can't talk to half the guys on the team even though I'm their _captain_ , and I'm always in a bad mood and you—need something better. Than that."

Bitty says, "Don't tell me what I need," but it's soft, full of disbelief. "Jack, I've liked you since ... I don't even know anymore."

"Oh."

"Yeah. You're ... don't talk about yourself like that, you're not _mean_. I think you're sweet. And you're funny. And you obviously care about these guys so much, even if you don't know how to ..." He shakes his head. "Anyways. You know what I mean."

Jack wipes his hands on his jeans. Bitty thinks he's sweet. Bitty likes him. His ears ring. "Yeah."

"I never, ever thought you'd ... I mean, for goodness sake, I thought you were straight until this whole mess with Kent. Does anyone know?"

Jack shakes his head. "Doesn't come up."

"I guess not." Bitty goes back to wringing his hands. "You—you're being serious?"

"I wouldn't joke."

"I know, I know, but I mean—this isn't some kind of—you've actually thought about this?"

Jack nods hard.

"Wow." Bitty runs his hands through his hair and it makes the cowlick at the back stick up. "Wow, I can't. I honestly can't believe this, you're—you're _Jack Zimmermann_ , Jack—"

"I'm aware."

"—and you're—God, you're _famous_ —"

"Am not."

"—and you're _beautiful_ —"

"Thank you."

"—I just can't—me? Honestly?"

Jack smiles and says, "You're amazing," before he can stop himself. "Why not you?"

"I don't know. I just never, ever thought you'd ..." He stops. He starts wringing his hands again. "Wait. Um, is this about Kent?"

"No. What do you mean?"

"I mean—with this whole thing that happened, with those photos, and me and him, and—are you just trying to ... I don't know, replace him?"

Jack's breath catches. He's so humiliated that this is even a valid question, but it is, and he knows it, and he's ashamed of himself because Bitty shouldn't have to think about that, being in anyone's shadow or questioning why Jack might want him, thinking it has anything to do with Kent fucking Parson.

"He has nothing to do with this."

"Are you still in love with him?" Bitty asks in this tiny voice, and Jack feels like he's been punched in the diaphragm, all the air burning out of his lungs. Can Bitty tell he was in love with Parse? _Was_ he?

"No," Jack says, voice level. "No, that was—it was a long time ago."

"But when he was here," Bitty presses, "and since then, you've never ...?"

Jack flushes with guilt. Yeah, when Parse had cornered him in his room this past winter, they'd made out. And once, in his freshman year, Kent came to visit Samwell, and it was weird and emotional and raw and they fucked more times than either of them really wanted to, and he spent the night crammed into the tiny bed in the dorm room Jack had gotten to prove to himself he could live around other people. That was the last time they'd really been together, but it was hard not to fall back into that when they were around each other. Old habits die hard, and it's hard not to want him, illogically, when he's right in front of him and all they ever do is remember how it had been when they were together.

"It doesn't matter," Jack insists. "I don't _want_ him. I want—" _You_ sounds too intense, too forward. He picks, "This," and gestures like an idiot at Bitty, who smiles a bit.

"This old thing?" Bitty laughs and motions to himself in the same way. 

Jack goes red, but he says, "Exactly," anyways, and wavers a bit closer. With Parse, it was always intense and explosive, like a made-for-television melodrama with dramatic one-liners where it took everything they had not to just devour each other, bruises and spit and all. But Bitty makes him laugh. Bitty makes him feel young and unbelievably stupid and dopey, like he can let go and laugh at himself, and he's never done that in a way that made him feel good before, and he wants him so, so bad, but it's easy. Soft. Natural.

"So," Bitty says quietly. "You're not on the rebound."

"No."

" _Definitely_ not on the rebound?"

"Nope."

"So, that means you just ..."

"Genuinely want to be here," Jack finishes. "Liking you."

"Wow."

"Is that surprising? What did you think I was doing?"

"I don't know. Filling a void. Or I thought maybe you felt guilty, 'cause you knew I liked you." Bitty rubs his arm. "You're leaving in a couple months."

"I'm not going far," Jack says quickly. "I mean, it's not like—I'll still be around, when I can. It'll be different, but I'm not gonna drop of the face of the earth."

"You'll be in Providence. And busy."

"You can come visit. I'll fly you anywhere, whenever we have time."

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You're not asking, I'm asking. I can't be out to the team, yet, but you can still—I mean, I'm not afraid of having you around, you're—" Jack shakes his head and laughs. "We're getting ahead of ourselves."

"Yeah," Bitty agrees. "I mean, we haven't even ..."

Jack holds his breath. "Right."

"Yeah."

Jack hesitates. He wants this to go well. He needs it to. He can still hear the music coming up through the floor, and his door isn't locked, but to lock it now seems pointless or maybe even rude.

He takes a step closer to Bitty, who looks absolutely petrified, and if he hadn't seen him with that tool Ransom and Holster set him up with for Winter Screw—he remembers the scalding embarrassment he felt when he realized he was jealous, when he saw them together outside the Haus that night—he'd wonder if Bitty had ever kissed anyone. The thought of anyone not wanting Bitty seems absurd, but he knows the world isn't kind, and he's been listening to Bitty's self-deprecating little comments for two years now. He knows it's been hard for him. Bitty shouldn't be surprised that Jack, with all his hang-ups and fuck-ups, or anyone else, would want to be with him. 

He needs this to go well.

They're close enough to reach out and touch, just inside of what the bro code of masculinity dictates. Jack takes a deep breath, moves in closer and touches his hand to Bitty's jaw, the side of his face, half sure he's going to fuck this up and poke him in the eye or something. He hears him inhale sharply. His skin is so soft and his face is so small, and he's shorter close up like this, and the realization that he's going to have to stoop down to kiss him makes his heart stutter with fondness, so strong it's almost unwelcome.

Bitty tips his face up and meets him halfway.

His mouth is softer than anyone's should be allowed.

It's tentative, testing. He touches Jack's forearm and his jaw trembles faintly as his mouth moves, his eyes fall shut, he breathes him in. Bitty goes to part but Jack chases him with his lips, pressing them together again, taking his lower lip between his. He slides his hand back into his hair, the other on his neck, and it's hard to stop, he doesn't want to. Bitty runs his hands down his chest and the _need_ he manages to convey in such a simple gesture is overwhelming, blatant, and it makes Jack dizzy. Their tongues touch and his heart starts beating so fast it's scary.

There's a pounding at the door.

"Yo, Jack! You in there?"

It's Ransom. Jack reaches out and slaps his hand against the door and says, " _Yes_ , don't come in!" way too fast and way too telling, and Bitty, whose hands are still on him, thinks in a weird disconnected way that the Jack who's in this bedroom with him, with feelings for him, kissing him, is the same Jack he sees every other day, everywhere else, the same Jack that Ransom knows. It sounds obvious, but it didn't feel real. But it is: the Jack that everyone else knows likes him, even when he's other places.

"That lady from the _Daily_ 's downstairs, wants to talk to you."

"It's a party."

"Yeah, well—man of the hour." Ransom pauses. "You got someone in there, bro? It's like, ten."

"I'll be right down."

Ransom's laugh makes it through the door. "Jack. You continue to be the weirdest dude I know." He starts to walk away and says, "If you see Bits, tell him Lardo's got his phone."

Bitty's fingers tighten on Jack's shirt. Jack says, "Will do."

They hear the stairs creak as Ransom leaves. Jack lets out a breath. His hand is still on Bitty's neck and he moves his thumb absentmindedly against his skin.

"I guess we go downstairs." He looks down at Bitty, who's biting back a smile.

"Sure. We should, um. Do this again sometime," he jokes, and Jack kisses him again to hide his smile, quick but soft, yielding, and he's left unexpectedly breathless.

"Sure."

Bitty pokes him in the side. "I'm gonna hold you to that."

"I wouldn't worry about it."

 

 

Downstairs, Jack sits at the kitchen table with a reporter from the Daily with a cup of what looks like booze but what Bitty knows is just water; he taught him the trick of leaving a lime wedge floating in it. Bitty finds Lardo, who is leaning against the fridge dangling his phone from her fingers.

"Why’d you get a text from Kent Parson?" She drops his phone into his waiting hand. "Glad you're not dumb enough to have the message text show up on the lock screen, but—I thought the boys were joking."

"We're not dating."

"You know Jack's gonna straight up murder you if he finds out," she says slowly. "All textin' each other and shit. Like, I've never even seen _him_ text Parse."

"We're really, honestly not. Y'all blew this way out of control, I wouldn't date Jack's—" He almost slips again and says _ex_. "Former best friend, or enemy, or whatever weird thing is going on there." He crosses his arms. "I'm a good friend." 

"I know, Bits. Which is why I was surprised." She purses her lips, then knocks her elbow into his side. "Speaking of _good friend_ , you and Jack've been pretty buddy-buddy lately. Does _that_ somehow factor into this Parse thing?"

Bitty goes red. "We have not been buddy-buddy."

"Bro, you can see your guys', like—okay, I'm gonna be honest here and say sexual tension—from fuckin' space, I swear to God. It's like you've got an index of all the ways two dudes can pseudo-platonically touch each other and you're trying to get through every single entry."

"Lardo!"

"Just calling it like I see it. He's not ruffling _my_ hair." She looks over his shoulder at Jack. "You knew, right? Like, you can tell? Don't tell me you couldn't tell."

"What, that—"

"That you're all over each other, in both of your weird 'don't want to offend anyone' ways. I mean, can _we_ tell? Yes. Do we all talk about it frequently, when you're not around? Who knows, Bits, life is crazy."

"Oh my _God_."

"So, what's going on? There's something. Tell me there's something."

Jack didn't say anything about telling their friends, not when they've had exactly two kisses, which Bitty can still feel on his lips, and is re-living so hard he can hardly pay attention to this conversation. What's harmless to him might be a career-ending move for Jack, and he wants to be good.

"Nothing's going on," he insists. "C'mon, it's Jack."

She looks at Jack, sitting stiffly at the table with the reporter, who's leaning in towards him, and back at Bitty, who's fidgeting with his phone and pointedly not looking over there.

"Bitty, if you're in some kind of secret ménage a trois with Jack and Parse and you're not going to tell me, I'm so fuckin' hurt."

"Ugh!" He laughs and shoves her, and she shoves him back. "You are _drunk_ , and I am a _gentleman_ , and for you to even insinuate—"

"That you'd wanna be with two dudes who are like, GQ photo shoot levels of hot? God, how fucking dare I."

He thinks about that, both of them, and blushes to his ears. "You're impossible."

"That's what you love about me." She leans into his side and, like always, Bitty loves the feeling of being with his one friend who's shorter than him. Lardo lowers her voice and digs her chin into his shoulder. "Seriously, though. You're good?"

Bitty looks across the crowded kitchen at Jack, there and gone and there again in between the coming and going bodies, and thinks of his flustered 'You can come visit.' He says, "I'm really, really great. Honestly."

He checks his phone. Twenty minutes ago, Kent said, _hows it goin w ol blue eyes._

Again, he realizes how little he and Jack have talked about—whatever it is that they're doing. He doesn't know that he's been talking to Kent, and he suddenly feels guilty about that. He'll tell him when he can.

_Please tell me you actually call him that._

_not to his face, i like being alive. answer the q_

_Well, it depends why you're asking??_

_maybe i think it's funny. maybe i want j to be happy. maybe im signif drunk. ever thought of THAT_

_All of them crossed my mind. And. it's good. he's fine_

_fine with a really long i?? like fiiiiiine? also your question dodging is v telling_

_You actually ARE drunk, aren't you?_

_honeslty i'm insulted that yr not. you're in college, kid. live a little_

_I'm living plenty._

_thought so ;)_

_You're insufferable_

_i've been told it's charming_

Bitty jumps when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He spins and comes face to face with Jack's chest.

"You had the weirdest look on your face," Jack says, but he's smiling. He left his water cup somewhere. "Who're you texting?"

Jack drops his hand and Bitty looks up at him and his awkward but earnest smile, a little self-conscious, obviously as aware of what just happened upstairs as he is. And Bitty thinks: he should probably come clean. He doesn't want to tell him months from now and have it be a _thing_.

"Uh, Kent, actually."

Jack bristles. "Oh."

"It's not bad! It's nothing bad," Bitty says quickly, "but, maybe we should talk? Somewhere else?"

"Sure." Jack won't take his eyes off him. He leads him outside to the far corner of the porch, because it's not a big enough party to spill out onto the lawn so they're relatively alone, but public enough that no one's going to hammer on Jack's door making assumptions.

Jack keeps watching him and Bitty feels so, so bad that he looks nervous, that _he_ 's making him nervous. Bitty claps his hands together.

"Okay, so, just to reiterate, I'm still definitely not dating Kent."

" _Did_ you?"

"No! I'm honestly not interested—never did, won't, have no intention to in the future. We did not and _will not_ hook up, or anything, ever, and it wasn't like that at all." He drops his voice, and maybe it's not necessary, but he adds, "I like _you_ ," because the thrill of saying it is still so raw. Jack's shoulders lose a bit of their stiffness. 

"Okay. So. What's up?"

Bitty twists his hands up. They're standing close, but not too close, Jack leaning on the railing in front of him. He wants to kiss him again. It is in no way the time.

"This is probably one of the stupidest things I've ever done, honestly. In terms of having to explain it after, like, 'I thought it was a good idea at the time,' you know? Um." He looks down. "When you saw me with him, it was 'cause I was asking him advice. On how I was supposed to know if you liked me or not, because I had _no_ idea, and I can never tell what you're thinking, and I was sort of sad, so I thought maybe he'd know, like, if you had a tell for when you're into someone,  which seems stupid now because we already talked about it and oh my God I can't believe you actually _are_ into me, but anyways, I didn't tell him _how_ I knew about you two, and he really didn't say much, and it was so stupid, and I'm really, really sorry that I—"

Jack starts laughing. Bitty's sure he's said something wrong.

"You asked _Parse._ For advice about _me_."

"Yes?" Bitty fiddles with his hands. "I know it's sort of a rude thing to do, I shouldn't have gone behind your back and—"

"No, no." Jack stops him, reaches out just short of touching him. "It's fine, it's—you're so _weird_."

"Hey!" Bitty punches him in the arm. "Rude!"

"What did you think he was going to say? If he blinks twice, he likes you?"

"No!"

"Why didn't you just ask me?"

"Because you're terrifying, Jack!" Bitty laughs and leans on the railing of the patio next to him, scrubbing his face with his hands. "You wouldn't have said anything to _me_ if it weren't messing with your game, so don't you judge." He lets his arm touch Jack's, and neither of them moves away. "God, we're such a mess."

"A bit." Jack ducks his head to look at him. "Is that okay?"

Bitty lets his fingers brush Jack's wrist. "It's great."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaawkward. one more chapter after this one
> 
> [tumblr](http://ronibravo.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's been relatively normal; a little smiley, more jokey, but still Jack. By contrast, Bitty almost walked into a door jamb the other day because Jack was leaning over the back of the couch talking to Shitty and his t-shirt stretched across his shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this is 90% just them doing it but my other stories don't have them doin the full sex and i wanted to write it so sue me

 

Bitty doesn't ask Jack if this means they're dating. He remembers his flustered _you can come visit, I'll fly you anywhere_ , and he's pretty sure that whatever page they're on, it's the same one.

 

 

He knows Jack can't be publicly out right now, not until the media circus surrounding his career dies down, but on a walk back from Faber at seven in the morning, Bitty bumps his shoulder against his and asks, "Are we going to tell the boys?"

Jack hums. They booked it out of the locker room before everyone to walk back together and his hair is still wet, pushed back off his forehead. Bitty could never stop looking at him before, but now that he knows it's okay, he's not sure he's ever going to stop. Jack keeps their arms pressed together through their jackets.

"I think they're going to find out anyways."

"And that's okay with you?"

"I'd rather that than some stiff house meeting." He shrugs. "Might be funny."

"It's definitely going to be funny," Bitty agrees. "They're going to, like ... make posters. Serenade us. Chirp us 'til they can't breathe."

Jack leans down to say, more quietly, "I think they already know. You're pretty obvious."

" _You're_ obvious!" Bitty laughs and shoves him.

"Stop going out of your way to touch me, Bittle, it's embarrassing. Pretty transparent."

"Oh my God, you are _insufferable_."

Jack clicks his tongue and smiles. "Okay."

 

 

They win their game against Denver U and Jack scores two points, one of which Bitty got the assist on. Outside the locker room afterwards, when everyone's still inside screaming and hooting, he grabs Bitty, pushes him into the wall and kisses him, and Bitty buries his hands in his wet hair and kisses him back, his feet a couple inches off the ground. Denver's coach almost catches them, but they're both grinning all night.

 

 

Between class, practice, games and a thousand other things, they don't get a chance to be alone. Bitty always figured he thought about sex as much as any college student might—especially for someone who's never had it—but now that it's a real thing that might happen to him, with _Jack_ , he feels like he's going insane. He tells himself to keep his distance, that it'll happen when it happens, but it's the hardest thing he's ever done because now he _knows_ he can touch Jack, that he won't mind—he can come up behind him at the kitchen table and smooth his hands over his shoulders, snag his wrist when they bump into each other in the hallway, kiss him goodnight just inside the threshold of his bedroom. Bitty can tell he's stressed about playoffs, graduation and everything else, and he refuses to be another worrying factor for him, so he waits, more than happy with their few stolen kisses, in a constant state of dopey lovesickness. He tries not to let it show.

 

 

Then it's a Friday night and Bitty's working on an assignment at his desk with a half-finished and now-cold mug of tea. Jack went for a run earlier but he got home a while ago; Bitty heard him downstairs, and then the shower across the hall was running, and now he is, presumably, somewhere in the Haus. Bitty knows he finished a paper yesterday, and they don't have a game until later in the week, and in that case, he can't be blamed for listening very carefully for footsteps in the hallway. He feels like he's been buzzing with electricity lately, always aware of where Jack is when he’s nearby him, jumping at every little touch. He doesn't think he's ever wanted anything so bad in his life, and it's embarrassing because Jack's been relatively normal; a little smiley, more jokey, but still Jack. By contrast, Bitty almost walked into a door jamb the other day because Jack was leaning over the back of the couch talking to Shitty and his t-shirt stretched across his shoulders. 

There's a quiet knock at his door and he jumps. "Come in!"

The door opens and of course it's Jack. Of course he's wearing one of his nice t-shirts, 'nice' only by Bitty's standards because it's old and shrunk in the wash and hugs his biceps. Bitty swallows a lump in his throat. "Hi."

"Hey. Are you busy?"

"No!" Bitty slams the lid of his laptop shut.

"Are you _actually_ not busy?"

"Un-busy enough." Bitty stands and wanders closer. "What's up?"

"Seriously, Bittle, if you start failing they'll put you on academic probation and then you can't be on the team."

"I'm fine, it's—I've almost got it done." In a moment of boldness, he reaches out and brushes his fingers down Jack's arm. "How're you?"

Jack looks quickly over his shoulder. "Good," he says, voice low. "If you're done ignoring your class work, do you want to ... hang out, or something?"

"'Hang out' is so much less suave when we live together." Bitty steps into his space, where he can smell him, feel his breath, touch the soft hem of his t-shirt. His body thrums. "In your room?"

"Yeah. Not that I don't like yours, but ..." He trails off and Bitty's mind auto-completes with _Jack's bed is bigger,_ and he doesn't care if he's right or not.

"Okay," he says softly, and pushes up on his bare feet to kiss him. Jack's hands come up and steady his shoulders, wrap around the back of his neck. "Let's go."

It's two steps across the hall into Jack's room. When they're inside, behind the shut door, Jack kisses him hard, his breath rushing. He holds his face in both hands and bumps their foreheads together and Bitty's _shocked_ to see this hunger in him. Where was this earlier? Has he just been hiding it? "Jesus."

"Is this okay?" Jack asks, and Bitty laughs and kisses him again, clutching at his shirt.

"Are you kidding?" he says between kisses. "All week I've—I could hardly look at you without— _mmph_." Jack kisses him mid word. "I didn't know you wanted to."

"I didn't want to come on too strong," Jack admits, stroking thumbs along his cheekbones. "Or pressure you. I thought you'd want to wait, or something."

Bitty accidentally laughs, kisses him again. "Oh my God, we're so stupid."

"Yeah," Jack agrees, not bothering to deny it. He moves his hands up Bitty's back and feels the catch in his breath, presses him back against the door even though it's a bad idea to be so close to the hallway. Bitty winds his arms around his neck and makes this happy little sound and Jack has no idea how he ever waited so long to do this because now it feels like he'd die if some part of him wasn't touching some part of Bitty, and it's bad. Or good. Intense, anyways. 

Bitty breaks away and asks, "What are we doing here?" a little out of breath.

Jack says, "Anything," and if it comes out a little desperate, Bitty doesn't say anything.

"I want," he starts, speaking in between kisses, "whatever—you're willing to—give me."

"So, we're at an impasse."

"More like we're both being big babies who won't say what they want," Bitty laughs.

They both pause, move back far enough to look at each other. Jack takes a breath and says, "You don't have to," at the same time that Bitty says, "Fuck me," and for the rest of his life, Bitty will remember the look of complete and unbridled shock on Jack's face.

"I'm so sorry," he says quickly, just when Jack says, "That's—" so he stops. "You go first."

Jack clears his throat. "Sorry. I'm ... fine with that."

"You're _fine_?"

"Good," Jack corrects frantically, "great."

"You're _great_ with that?"

"Christ." Jack stoops and thunks his head on Bitty's shoulder. "Sorry. Give me a minute. I'm being awkward."

Bitty laughs and runs his hands up his arms.

"No you’re not, I'm sorry. Are we not on the same page? We don't have to."

"No, we are. I don't know why I was surprised." Jack looks up. "Have you ever done ... that ... before?"

"No."

"No, you haven't ...?"

"No I haven't _anything_." Bitty lets go of Jack and fiddles with his hands. "I don't know, it just never happened, it's not like I don't know how it _works_ , I just. Haven't. Is that a problem?"

"Of course not, but—that's kind of a big deal."

"I guess."

"Are you sure you don't want to just—"

"Jack," Bitty huffs. "I'm not—I don't want to be pushy, this is up to you, too, but, God, I'm almost twenty, and I've never ..." He runs his fingers down Jack's stomach. "I feel stupid. I want to."

"You want to because you want to, or you want to because you think you should?" Jack asks, cautious. Virginity is a weird, foreign concept, and Jack knows that but for the force of nature that is Kent Parson, he could have been older than Bitty when he lost his, easily. He has the virtue of not worrying about it now, but he imagines it must be stressful. Bitty looks like it's stressful.

"I want to because I want to," Bitty says. "I just _do_ , and it's—well. It's you. Believe it or not, I sort of trust you."

Jack smiles and kisses him instead of saying something stupid, something either sappy or self-deprecating, _I'm honoured_ or _I don't understand why you're trusting me with this_.

"Whatever you want," he says honestly, lips moving against his. Outside of his generally low opinion of himself, he doesn't think there's anything he wouldn't give Bitty if he asked.

"Do you," Bitty starts, and laughs nervously, awkwardly, "Uh, normally, do you—or have you, in the past—are you the one who—"

Jack saves him the embarrassment of finishing his sentence. He shrugs and says, "Both," like it's the easiest thing in the world, and Bitty sees stars. Images rush in, a teenage boy's unapologetic spank bank; Jack and Kent, Jack braced above him, bodies moving, his back bowed; Kent and Jack, Kent's front pressed to Jack's back, his chin hooked over his shoulder, laced fingers, Jack's buried face.

"Wow."

Jack asks, "What do _you_ want?" watching him carefully, but Bitty just pushes up on his toes and kisses him, and he doesn't ask again; he's not particularly concerned either way. Bitty's hard to stop kissing, like a motor inside him propelling him forward, pulling them together. He runs his hands down Bitty's back and stoops to grab his ass and Bitty makes a surprised sound that he loves and his hands ball into fists on Jack's shoulders.

"You're," Bitty says, more out of breath than he should be, "too tall for us to be standing."

"That sounds like an excuse."

Bitty laughs, an unexpected, embarrassed _HA!_ and Jack pulls him to the bed and they sit awkwardly next to each other and their knees knock, but it's a better reach. Bitty kisses more confidently now, and when his hands start playing with the hem of Jack's shirt, he's surprised but pleased. He lets him pull it over his head and smooth his hair down after, and his hands go straight back to roaming over his chest. He says half a word then gives up, kisses Jack again and shifts to sit on his knees because he's still too short, so Jack turns and eases him to lie down and he goes willingly. He braces himself on his arms above him and Bitty touches his throat, his chest, his biceps, and breaks away to speak against his cheek. "You're so strong, oh my God. I know that's, I mean, you're an athlete, but— _God_ , your arms," and Jack laughs at him and brushes his hair back as Bitty says, “Ugh, shut me up.”

"Thank you," he says, and against his better judgement, adds, "No luck getting rid of my fat ass yet," and Bitty gasps.

"Jack, no, your ass is a _treasure_ , do you actually—"

"Everyone makes fun of it."

"They're bein’ _serious_ , it's—you're—you look amazing," Bitty says, and moves his hands down Jack's back and, pausing as if to ask for permission first, slides his hands over Jack's ass and laughs right away. "Oh my God, I'm touching Jack Zimmermann's famous butt."

"Stoppit."

"It's like meeting a celebrity. Your ass is _amazing_. How many people have dreamed of doing this? This is—" Jack drops his hips into him to shut him up, and Bitty's sentence gets swallowed in a gasp, and he inadvertently drags him closer with a handful of ass. _"Jack."_

Jack kisses under his jaw, down his throat, keeps him pinned with his hips between his legs; he can feel him, already hard, and it makes him so excited and so nervous at the same time. Bitty's hands don't leave his ass, urging him forward—except for when they suddenly do, and he takes a sharp breath in.

"Before we go any further, we should, um. Get stuff."

"Stuff."

"If we're gonna do this."

Jack gets it, embarrassed that he didn't earlier. It's been a long time. "Oh."

"Do you have anything?"

Jack shakes his head. Sex is buried at the bottom of a long list of his priorities, and has been for a long time. He sits back to look at Bitty, who looks ... uncomfortable.

"I have, uh, lube," he says, haltingly. "In my room."

Jack honest to God _grins_ at him and he covers his face with his hands and says, "Shut up! Go away!" and Jack kisses the backs of his hands and laughs.

"No condoms?"

" _No_. Lord, why would I? You really don't have any?"

"No."

"Oh. The boys always said you were ... with girls, a lot."

Jack rolls his eyes. "Yeah, they would."

"You can see why I thought you were straight." Bitty blinks up at him, thinking about every time the boys said something about Jack getting sucked off in his room; what was he actually doing? Reading quietly? Thinking about Parse? Being sad? "Can you ask Shitty for one?"

Jack snorts. He rolls off Bitty and sits up, running a hand through his hair. "He'd never let me live it down."

"We could go buy some?" Bitty ventures. Then his face lights up. "Oh, wait! There's that bowl by the entry. Communal condom bowl."

"Oh. Right."

They look at each other for a few long, long seconds, and then—

"Not it!" Bitty yelps, and Jack scowls.

"Really?"

"Yep. C'mon." He runs his hand down Jack's arm and Jack definitely does not turn to puddy under his fingers, because he's a grown man with priorities. "It'll take two seconds."

"Everyone's down there."

"They won't be paying attention."

Jack sighs. He can already see the shit-eating grins he's going to get if they catch him, but then there's Bitty, lying in his bed, and he hears his voice from earlier, breath on his lips, _fuck me_ , and he's not a saint.

"Alright. Go get your lube." Jack vaults off the bed. "Teenage deviant."

"I'm _almost_ twenty."

"So, yeah." Jack pulls his shirt back on. "Be right back."

 

Bitty leaves the room with him and ducks into his own bedroom. Jack creeps downstairs.

 

 

The boys are all watching TV together, some show Jack doesn't recognize, and the Haus is dark. He steps carefully, silently on bare feet behind the couch, not even daring to breathe. 

He just reaches the bowl when he hears Shitty's booming voice ring out.

"Oh my sweet motherloving fuck, everyone stop what you're doing, Jack Zimmermann is dipping into the condom bowl."

Everyone in the living room turns around to look at him, cackling and hooting wildly, and Jack turns bright red. "Fuck off."

"Real eloquent, oh captain our captain. Who've you even _got_ up there?" Holster looks over the back of the couch. "We didn't see anyone come in."

"Pretty sneaky, Jacky."

"I didn't know you even _had_ sex."

"Oh my God, he's taking _two_!"

"Ambitious!"

Jack squeezes his eyes shut and makes a beeline for the stairs to a chorus of laughter, clutching the condoms in his fist.

Shitty calls after him. "Your shirt's on backwards, Great One!"

 

 

He gets back to his bedroom and slams the door shut behind him, and Bitty's hiding a smile behind his hand. There's a little plastic bottle with a blue cap on the corner of Jack's desk. "I heard laughing."

"They caught me."

"Oh my gosh, that's _hilarious!"_ Bitty laughs, and Jack whips the condoms at him, picks him up and chucks him on the bed, climbing on top of him. "They know their stoic hockey robot has feelings! Urges!" Bitty gasps in laughter as Jack kisses his cheeks, nips at his jaw. "It's the end of an era! Their fearless wallflower has— _ah!"_ Jack bites at the column of his throat and he digs his hands into his shoulders. "If that leaves a mark, you're only incriminating yourself."

"Don't care," Jack says into his neck, nosing up behind his ear. He sucks the spot he bit to make Bitty gasp.

"You do too."

"Not now." He pulls his shirt off again to feel Bitty's little hands wander unabashedly up the muscles in his back. Having Bitty under him makes him unhinged and desperate in a way he hasn't been in a long time, and he's not uncomfortable, but it's scary. It's a lot.

Bitty lets him pull his shirt over his head but he seems embarrassed, keeping him in close so he can't look at him, and Jack wants to say something about it but he can't find the words, and neither of them are talking. Maybe later, he thinks, it might be easier, but now it's just frantic, for both of them. He feels close just from their messy, adolescent rutting, and it's been a long time since that happened, too.

He puts his hand on Bitty's hip, waits, then slips it between their bodies and touches him through his jeans, and he feels him suck a breath in his nose.

Bitty whispers, "You have big hands," and Jack laughs against his cheek and moves the heel of his palm against him, resists the urge to say 'thanks.' Bitty surges into him and makes a soft noise against his mouth, twisting under him, foot digging into the back of his calf.

_"Jack,"_ Bitty breathes, "c'mon," and Jack fumbles with his jeans, clumsy despite everything and feeling, at twenty-four, the same way he did when he was eighteen. He tugs Bitty's jeans down off his feet, does the same to his own when Bitty pulls ineloquently at his, and kisses him so hard it hurts, lips caught between teeth, hands in each other's hair. Their boxer briefs almost match. Bitty's a second away from making a bratty _speaking of big hands_ comment. He runs his hands down Jack's bare back and for once doesn't mind being small; he loves being smaller than Jack, the feeling of being under the weight and power of his body. 

He's sure he'd die of embarrassment if he had to _ask_ Jack to take his briefs off, so he starts to push them down himself, but Jack notices and tugs them off and, at Bitty's insistent fingers, his own.

Bitty says, "Oh my God," and Jack thinks it sounds a little mortified but that can't be bad, not when his hands are dug against the jut of Jack's hipbones, eyes wide and staring.

Jack looms over him and kisses his neck, his Adam's apple, the pit of his throat, and wraps his fingers around his dick; his cry is just this side of _too loud_ and Jack shushes him softly through his teeth, even as he's sure _he's_ going to need shushing later, especially if Bitty keeps making these stifled sounds of pleasure, almost like it hurts, and Jack isn't even really doing anything yet. He moves his fist slowly, rests some of his weight on him, feels Bitty's trembling legs press into his to stop them; there's a little hand on his arm and another brushing awkwardly, obviously, at the crux of his hip, scared to go any further.

They kiss and it's needy and wet, and Bitty finally touches him and Jack thinks _I am going to be so embarrassed if I finish first_. But there's something so fucking endearing about Bitty's tentativeness, and he doesn't know what kind of things that says about him but he's sure they're bad, weird, predatory, some of the reasons he didn't ask Bitty out sooner, not wanting to be the creepy old dude, imbalanced power dynamics, Bitty's inexperience, the—

"Jack." One of Bitty's hands brushes his throat. "Are you okay? You're—" He kisses him, closed-mouth, a yielding press. "I'm good, this is good, okay?"

Jack nods against him and tries to figure out something to say that isn't an apology, keeps stroking him. But Bitty sighs shakily against his lips and touches his forearm, laughs. "Y-you're gonna have to slow down if you want ... hm."

Jack smiles against his cheek, and drags the pads of his fingers up the underside of his cock, feather light, and Bitty's little _ah!_ goes straight to his own cock, which pulses in Bitty's hand. "Hm?"

"Tease," Bitty breathes, his shoulders going tense. Jack thinks how easy it would be to make him come right now, a few twists of his wrist and he'd be there, sweating, trembling under him. But, Bitty wanted—

He reaches for the lube on Jack's desk without looking, misses once and then grabs it, and presents it wordlessly to Jack, who takes it and notes with some amusement that it's about a third empty. Bitty kisses him again and again, a transparent distraction and convenient way to avoid looking at him, not that Jack minds, when Bitty's got his hand around him and he hears, still, _this is good, okay?_ like a reminder bouncing around in his head, breathe, breathe, breathe.

Bitty idly scratches his fingers through Jack's chest hair as he waits, as Jack uncaps the lube, drips some onto his fingers and then tosses the bottle aside, strokes behind his balls. Bitty inhales sharply and suddenly doesn't know where to look; Jack's fingers slide against him, waiting, and he feels Jack's dick twitch in his hand, which is flattering. Jack eases two fingers inside him and he can hardly breathe and he doesn't know why he thought it would be _anything_ like doing it to himself, not with Jack hanging over him, lips pressed to the corner of his, thumb moving precum over the head of his cock.

Jack works his fingers into him, speechless with the tightness, heat and friction of his body, encouraged by the cries Bitty tries to silence with kisses, the way he bears down on him and half says his name. It's been _so_ long. He crooks his fingers and Bitty sinks his teeth into his lip, mostly by accident, and they both taste a hint of blood. Jack can feel when he's close, his body going tense, fingers digging into his thigh and pulse quickening, and he slows down, thinking of earlier, _fuck me_.

He asks, "Should I stop?" feeling dizzy. His voice sounds far away from his own ears.

"No, just," Bitty starts, breath hitching, "this is good, _please_ , just ..."

Jack's heart swells with unexpected pride, that he can be the one doing this, that he's being trusted with this, and that no matter how many times he's fucked up in the past, it doesn't matter if this is something he can do for someone like Bitty, who might be one of the most amazing people he's ever met, who doesn't think anyone could want him.

He moves a little quicker, harder, and Bitty gasps and lets him go to hold his face in both hands, kissing him, licking against his tongue, trying and failing to be quiet. He starts to sweat and Jack can feel the tremor in his thighs again from holding back, and he doesn't want him to, he wants to make him come; he works a third finger into him and sucks his tongue and Bitty moans into his mouth.

"Oh my God." Bitty breaks away and presses his face into his neck, voice frantic, coming apart. His fingers dig into Jack's shoulders hard enough to hurt and he goes, "Oh God, I _can't_ — _fuck_ , _Jack,_ " and Jack can't remember if he's ever heard him swear before tonight, but he wouldn't mind hearing it more often.

He comes on this unexpectedly soft, shivery sound that Jack's never going to forget, going tense and still as Jack works him through it and feels his body tighten around him. His come drips over Jack's fingers, hits his stomach. Jack nudges his face up and kisses him before he's through, his mouth lax, lips raw.

"Oh," Bitty breathes, "my God," and Jack pulls out and he winces, as much from discomfort as latent embarrassment. He tries to get his heart to stop beating so fast but he's still buzzing with pleasure, and Jack's being patient, smoothing his hands over Bitty's thighs, politely ignoring his own obvious hard-on, which can't be easy. When Bitty reaches out and wraps his fingers around him, his hand tightens on his thigh.

"Um," Bitty mumbles against his cheek, "I don't know if this is—can I go down on you? Or ..."

Jack's "Yeah," sounds more than a little stunned.

"I've never ..."

"That's okay."

Bitty believes him. He sits up and falters for a moment, and eventually decides to sink to the floor on his knees, and Jack sits in front of him on the bed, face flushed and looking almost more bewildered than Bitty does.

"I'm sorry if it's bad."

"Take your time."

That's reassuring. Bitty used to have nightmares about this in high school, the thought of giving a guy head for the first time, some closeted football jock who'd push him too far and get mad at him for being bad at it. But Jack smooths his hair back and Bitty believes, wholeheartedly, that Jack would stop if he wanted to. And the way Jack inhales when he touches him might be the best thing he's ever heard, all sharp and surprised. He feels good. He wants to make _him_ feel good.

He licks the head of his cock, salty and bitter like come, and watches Jack's hands fist in the sheets. He does it again, testing, and again, then carefully closes his lips around him and _sucks_ and Jack makes this incredible noise in the back of his throat and Bitty feels himself getting hard again. He takes more of him into his mouth, watching his teeth, not sure what to do with his hands, but he's seen this enough in grainy videos to have the gist of how it works and it feels _so_ good to know he's making Jack feel good, to be the centre of his world for these handful of minutes, between his legs, sucking him off.

Jack's hand comes up and smooths his hair out of his eyes and rests on his bobbing head; he feels fingers on the shell of his ear and then, tentatively, on his moving jaw, his cheek, which is somehow sweet and overtly sexual at the same time, touching him so gently but feeling himself in his mouth. He feels Jack's heart speed up and he's making these wrecked, quiet breathy sounds that Bitty could drown in, so he must be doing okay; he tries to see how much of him he can take in, slowly sucking deeper and deeper until he thinks he might gag, but the hand in his hair is trembling slightly and that _has_ to be good. He moves a little faster, lets his hands wander up Jack's calves and thighs, his confidence building, and Jack hisses, "Oh shit," and palms his neck, his shoulder, and then, "Shit shit shit, I'm—you don't have to—"

Bitty keeps sucking anyways and feels him pulse in his mouth, and his hand closes around Bitty's shoulder and his breath turns ragged and he comes so hard all he can hear is the blood roaring in his ears. Bitty tries not to gag but does, and come drips down his chin onto the floor and more on his cheek as he jerks Jack through it, breathing hard. Jack sees stars, can't slow his heart, just looks down at Bitty, still sitting on the floor, and he realizes, too profoundly: _I get to remember this._

Bitty says, "Wow," and Jack reaches down and wipes come off his face with the heel of his palm. 

"Wow," he echoes, significantly more out of breath than Bitty. He's at a loss for words, mind still loopy and slow post-orgasm and scrambling to fit enough thoughts together for a sentence. Then he notices that Bitty's still hard. "Um."

Bitty rubs his hair where it sticks up at the back. "That was ... fun."

"Wow."

"Hey, don't—"

"No, c'mere."

Bitty stands; his legs shake a little, adrenaline, sitting on them. Jack snags his wrist, pulls him in and kisses him, runs his hands up his bare sides and down his stomach. They lie down next to each other and Jack gets his hand around him and Bitty huddles against his chest. He's still over-sensitive from last time and he trembles and gasps and clutches at Jack's arms and then he's _there_ , again, reduced to a shivering mess. Jack rubs his back. Bitty tries to remember his own name.

Slowly, they come down, adrenaline dissipating, first-time desperation ebbing into sleepy contentedness, shyness, an almost uncomfortable closeness. Neither is sure what to say and Jack's mind races with possibilities, what he's supposed to do now, and later, and whether they're going to do this again, if there's something Bitty expects him to say, if he's mad that they didn't go further—

Bitty kisses his collarbone and it all of it, or most of it, anyways, drips away.

"You okay?"

Jack nods and his chin bumps the top of Bitty's head.

"Good," Bitty says, and tucks his head against Jack's shoulder. Jack drops his arm over his side without thinking, and they're quiet again. Downstairs, someone yells at the TV. Jack has no idea what time it is. He almost nods off and Bitty's breath is so even against his skin that he thinks he's asleep, but then, after a while, he speaks.

"What was it like?" Bitty asks. "With him."

Jack sighs into his hair. There are honest things that spring instantly to mind, none of which he should say; he talked a lot, he bit, I was easily embarrassed, he liked that. But he doesn't want Bitty to compare any part of himself to Parse, because this isn't and will never be _that_ , and anyways, it's embarrassing. So he jokes, "You're not doing a great job at convincing me you don't have a crush on him," and Bitty snorts in amusement and pinches him.

"Don't joke."

"So why would you ask that?"

"Curious."

"Dumb," Jack corrects, then feels bad. "Sorry. Asking about someone's ex after ..."

"I know," Bitty says, and sits up a little. "But I like knowing about you. Is that weird?"

Jack looks at him, eyebrows drawn. "Yes." He smooths Bitty's hair back from where it flops over his forehead. "You're really weird."

"Am not."

"Lie back down."

Bitty does, resting his head on Jack's shoulder. "You don't have to answer."

"I know. It's just—it's stupid."

"What is?"

Jack takes a second to reply, his fingers fidgeting along Bitty's arm. When he finally speaks, it's slow, like he's picking each word carefully. "It was brutal. And macho. We probably sucked at it. And it's like I said. We were usually drunk, or I was, if not ..." He trails off. "It's not like I don't remember, but. It was different."

"Oh," Bitty says, and it's so obviously devastated by the thought of this that Jack tightens his arm around him.

"Don't be sad."

"But that's _sad_."

"A lot of sad things have happened to me. Most of them my fault."

"Jack ..."

"You know what I mean. I was a kid. There was a lot going on." He turns his head and talks into Bitty's hair. "Teenagers always drink a lot, it seemed normal. It made it easier. Sex is ... hard. Sometimes. For me."

"Oh."

"I mean, Christ, it took me _how_ long just to tell you that I ..." He sighs. "I'm not good at this."

"I think you're good," Bitty says, and Jack chuckles, presses his lips to his head in something that's almost a kiss. "Was this difficult for you? What we did just now?"

Jack doesn't say anything and Bitty worries, realizes belatedly that he might have pushed Jack into something he didn't want to do; it's not like he forgot about his anxiety, but for some reason he didn't think it would extend to this, and Jack had seemed so _into_ it, but what if he was panicking the whole time? What if that was awful for him? He turns and buries his face in his shoulder.

After almost an entire minute, Jack clears his throat.

"Has anyone told you you're easy to be around?"

Bitty sits up so fast he almost cracks Jack in the jaw with his head. Jack looks startled, his hands hovering where they used to be on Bitty. "Uh—"

"That's really sweet, Jack."

"Oh. Well, you are."

"That's really, really sweet. I don't make you nervous?"

"Not ... badly."

"That's really nice," Bitty says, and Jack laughs at him. Bitty bends down and kisses him. Jack makes a soft noise in his throat and settles his hand on Bitty's side and kisses back, his eyes falling shut, heartbeat finally slowing. After a few long moments, he drops his head back against the pillow. 

"Is this—" he starts, then shakes his head. "Sorry if that was weird to say. I shouldn't have—"

"No! It's good." Bitty lies back down against Jack's side. "I want you to feel okay."

"I do."

"Good." Bitty sighs. "Honestly, I was always sure my first time would be awful. A party hook-up or something. So this is ... kind of unbelievably amazing."

"Not too shabby."

"Like, the least shabby thing that has ever happened to me." He closes his eyes and focuses on the feel of Jack's chest rising and falling as he breathes. "Thank you."

Jack noses into his hair. He doesn't say, _I'm so glad we did this_ or _I think I could look at you forever and not get tired_. He says, "You'll sleep here?"

"Totally." Bitty burrows into his shoulder. "Just watch Shitty burst in in the morning. Like a sitcom."

"The door only locks from the bathroom side. It's a possibility."

Bitty yawns. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Tell him it's ... something about hockey."

"Yeah. He'll believe that."

"Workin' on plays."

"Improving teamwork."

Jack laughs. He isn't sure he's ever laughed in bed before, and decides he probably has, but can't remember it, and he couldn't have been sober. He falls asleep thinking about that.

 

  

Bitty isn't sure how long Jack's been awake for by the time he wakes up himself. The room is warm and quiet and he blinks awake and forgets where he is until he feels the solidness of the body pressed against his back and the heavy arm in the dip of his waist.

"Good morning," Jack says from behind him, shifting to press his face against the back of Bitty's neck. Bitty feels his stubble scratch against his skin and doesn't know what it means that he's so excited by it; he wants to lick his jaw, he wants beard burn.

"Morning," he says back. "How'd you sleep?"

"Good. You?"

"Great."

Jack sighs and curls his knees in behind Bitty's and drags him closer. "Good." Jack's voice is deep and rough with sleep, slightly more accented, or maybe Bitty's imagining it. "You snore a bit."

"Oh my God."

"It's cute."

"Shut up."

"It's like how dogs snore, all snuffly."

_"Ugh."_

Jack laughs against his skin and folds his arm against Bitty's chest. They're quiet after that, both at a loss for what could possibly be said, just holding each other and trying to decide whether or not they want to fall back asleep. Minutes tick by, and Bitty almost drifts off.

"Can I say something?" he asks eventually, and Jack doesn't make a joke. He senses the tone and just goes _mhhmm_ and presses his mouth to his shoulder.

"This doesn't feel real," Bitty admits, whispering. "I can't ... I never thought you'd ever like me, like this."

"I like you lots of ways," Jack says, and it's embarrassing and stupidly cute but it makes Bitty feel like he's glowing from the inside out. "Everyone likes you."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"Well, I can't vouch for everyone, but ... yeah." He runs his hand down Bitty's bare arm, over the curve of his bicep. "I know we're not supposed to talk about _locker room_ stuff, but I've—looked. At you."

Bitty inhales audibly. Jack laughs, "Well, you're always trying so hard _not_ to look, it's ... Holster caught me once. He winked. It was one of the more embarrassing things that's ever happened to me." 

Bitty can hardly believe him. "What's there to look at?"

Jack hums and runs his hand up his arm to his shoulder. "Muscles in your back." He slips his hand down his side. "Your little waist." He grabs his ass in his palm and squeezes, pressing his mouth to Bitty's nape. "This."

"Oh," Bitty breathes. Jack slips his hand around to his hip and pulls him closer, flush against his lap, and Bitty can feel him hard through the briefs he pulled back on before falling asleep last night. "Oh," he says again, and maybe it means something different than before or maybe it doesn't. Jack pushes his hips into him; he presses back just as hard. He can feel his length against the back of his legs, in the cleft of his ass.

Jack breathes into his hair. "Is this okay?"

"Yes," Bitty says, breathless, not even _yeah_. He loves this. It's lazy and sleepy, underlaid with this white-hot need that's somehow easier to feel in the morning, when the sun's coming through the blinds and they just slept all night tangled up in each other, and he's tucked against Jack's front and it's just this slow, hard roll of hips and Jack's heartbeat hammering against his back. It's easier than he ever thought this would be.

He groans, still sleepy but getting hard anyways, thinking about last night. He can feel every inch of Jack against his thighs, so close but at the same time not nearly close enough, not _there_. Jack's too tall to have his hips against his ass and have their faces together at the same time, so he curls into Bitty, presses his chest against his back and keeps him in place with that hand on his hip.

"Do you—"

"Yes," Bitty cuts him off, and it's pushy but he's past caring, past thinking Jack cares how polite he is. "Whatever you— _yes_."

Jack laughs and runs his hand up his side. "You don't know what I was going to say."

"I've got a pretty good idea." Bitty pushes his ass back and Jack's breath stutters, gets lost under his words.

"Okay," he says, less composed, still grinding into him in these hard, long movements. He kisses under Bitty's ear, his hairline, the back of his neck, and slips his hand into Bitty's briefs and pushes them down to his knees. He runs his hand down his stomach and stops just before his erection to hear his breath hitch, in surprise, arousal, anticipation, then brushes against him. He laughs gently into his ear.

"You're so hard," he teases. Bitty squirms back into him.

"First of all, so are you, and secondly, you are so hot I could die, so I don't know why you're surprised."

"Thank you," Jack says, like a dork, and wraps his fingers around him. Bitty gasps. "You too."

Bitty almost wants to argue but can't speak, tries not to come as soon as Jack slips his fingers over the head of his dick, wet with precum, and he can feel Jack hard between his legs and wants—more, everything, anything. He buries his face in the pillow and moans, and Jack kisses the back of his neck again, breathes hard against his skin, and his hand leaves Bitty; for a second he rolls away, and Bitty gasps at the loss.

He doesn't turn over or ask what Jack's doing. When his body comes back and he presses his front against Bitty's back again, he crooks his arm back to reach behind Bitty and his fingers are wet with lube. Bitty buries his face. Jack's fingers slip against him like last night, waiting wordlessly for any apprehension, and when it doesn't come he eases two fingers inside him and they both groan.

Bitty bears down on him, wanting more, his fingers twisting in the sheets, and their bare legs slide together. He closes his eyes, tries to breathe, tries to keep quiet, and rests his head back against Jack's collarbone, his shoulders tight with need. Jack remembers what he likes from last night and God, it's overwhelming, it feels so immeasurably good, and it goes on for minutes and he can't imagine what it's going to be like when—when—

Jack says, "Can we?" with his lips touching the shell of his ear, and the unintentional sweetness of _we_ , that this is something they're going to do _together_ , not something that's being done to Bitty, kind of makes Bitty want to cry.

"Yeah," Bitty says without looking at him and burrows into the pillow, into the sleep-warm sheets and Jack's too-soft bed, and tries to commit every detail of this moment to memory; the pattern of sun through the blinds cast on the wall, Jack's crumpled t-shirt still on the bed next to them, the heat and pressure of Jack's body at his back.

He moves away again, stretching over the side of the bed to the floor. He lies on his back and Bitty stays where he is, trying to catch his breath, body aching with the loss of something inside him. He listens to the crinkle of the condom wrapper, the plasticky sounds of rolling it on.

Jack puts his hand on his shoulder and says, "Hey," quietly, and when he turns to look at him Jack kisses him for the first time this morning, sucking his bottom lip between his, and it's slow and deep and breathtaking. He settles behind him again. "Can we stay lying down like this? It's—I like it."

Bitty nods and Jack kisses his shoulder, so unexpectedly affectionate, borderline sappy in a way he never thought Jack would be; he must be half asleep. He presses himself to Bitty's back and runs his hands down his thighs, his ass, lines himself up. The frantic desperation of last night is gone, replaced by a comfortable sleepiness, wordless communication and a towering affection neither of them are ready to talk about. A sunny morning.

Jack says, "Tell me if I'm hurting you," and last night, Bitty would have said _Jack_ with sass and impatience, but this morning he just nods again and finds Jack's hand under the pillow they're sharing. He laces their fingers together and Jack squeezes his.

He starts to ease in, unbearably slow, and Bitty's mouth drops open. Jack bares his teeth against his shoulder, body going tense, and he doesn't say anything but Bitty can feel a tremor in the hand curled around his hipbone. It hurts, of course it does, but it's so overwhelming, so good, so unbearable that he forgets to breathe and digs his nails into Jack's hand, a sob waiting in his throat.

Jack grinds his forehead into the back of Bitty's shoulder and swears under his breath, and sweat prickles everywhere they touch. He's careful, but it's still pretty bad at first. It's a minute before he's in and after that it's easier. He moves slowly and Bitty stifles his cries in his pillow, clutches at the sheets and tries so, so hard not to come or make Jack stop because it's too much. Jack breathes hard, never quite moaning, running his hand down Bitty's thigh and up his chest, his eyes squeezed shut.

Bitty wants to say a thousand things but nothing seems right; he never thought he'd get this, he never thought it would mean so much to him and this is _terrifying_ , this is _Jack_ , and if someone had told him last year or even last month that this is where he'd be today—waking up in Jack's bed being spooned by him, then having slow, heartfelt sex with him, his first time—he'd have laughed in their face. And now, here he is: Jack, inside him, the sound of their skin, their linked hands, the unbearable feeling of being as close to someone as two people can physically be. Each minute gets more bearable, feels better, more euphoric than any kind of pleasure he's been able to give himself.

It doesn't take him long. He comes sooner than he wanted and cries out into the pillow, crushing Jack's hand in his, and it's  _unbelievable_ , so intense it's almost too much. He bucks and his ears rush with static.

"Fuck," Jack swears against his shoulder, sounding far away. "That felt—"

"You don't have to stop," Bitty pants, because he knows he's close. Jack groans and pushes back in, moves Bitty with the hand on his hip more to hide his shaking hands than anything else, and presses a wet kiss under his ear, to the side of his throat. He swears again, maybe too loud, and he comes buried inside him, his fingers dug into his thigh.

Time stretches and pulls and lasts forever as they lie there together in the beat of receding pleasure. Jack doesn't pull out right away. He loosens his vice grip on Bitty's hip and hand and curls his arm around his side. "Christ."

Bitty hums and moves his thumb over the back of his hand, still held in his under their pillow. His pulse thunders through his body, so hard it almost hurts. "You okay?" Bitty whispers, and Jack laughs.

"Great."

He pulls out and shucks the condom and lies back down, kicking the tangled sheets off their legs. Bitty rolls over and tucks himself against his chest, shuddering with fading adrenaline. He kisses his clavicle, his chin, then his lips, and Jack holds his face in both hands and pulls him closer. Bitty laughs against his mouth and goes to say about twenty things at once, _I can't believe that just happened, that was crazy, that was good, am I wrong to expect a ‘next time?’_

Instead, he says, "It—it feels different, coming from ... inside."

"Didn't even touch you," Jack teases. "Flattering."

"Oh, shush." Bitty bumps his head against his chest. "I can't ... God. Thank you."

"I wasn't doing you a favour."

"I know, but—that was—really nice." Bitty feels himself blush, which is stupid given what they just did. _Really nice_ , he says, like an awkward parent reviewing a dance recital.

"Really nice," Jack says back, half honest agreement and half chirp. Bitty tugs on his chest hair in retaliation.

"You are the brattiest grown-ass man I have ever met."

Jack chuckles and puts an arm over his side, dragging him closer. He says, "You'll get used to it," and maybe Bitty's reading too much into it but he likes the subtle promise in that, a suggestion that he's going to be around, in Bitty's life, after graduation. If this is all he gets, well, that's the way life works sometimes. But if Jack wants to stick around like he said ... Bitty glows at the thought.

"Are you sore?" Jack asks after a beat, genuine concern and no trace of a joke.

"Uh, a little," Bitty lies. It's not excruciating but yeah, he's sore, but he doesn't want Jack to worry, or worse, feel guilty. "Wanna go back to sleep," he mumbles, and Jack sighs into his hair.

"For a bit."

"Mmm." Bitty gropes for the sheets and pulls them up, slips one of his knees between Jack's. "This is nice."

"Nice," Jack says back, and Bitty nips at him.

 

 

They stagger their departures from the bedroom, their showers and their arrivals downstairs so as not to arouse suspicion, but Shitty and Jack are both in the kitchen when Bitty comes down, and Shitty takes one look at him and says, "Great hickey, Bits."

Bitty just says, "Thank you," and heads for the fridge. Shitty hops up on the counter and looks between the two of them, stroking his moustache.

"Now, I may just be a simple law student," he says, wagging a finger between Jack and Bitty, "but—and correct me if I'm wrong—if you put two and two together, you usually get four. Like, almost every single time."

Bitty stifles a laugh. Jack smiles down at the bacon he's frying.

"I don't know, Shits. You sure about that?"

"Yeah, I don't know," Bitty says, balancing a carton of eggs and a bundle of spring onions in his hands. He bumps the fridge door shut with his hip. "I don't think that's right. Maybe you should stick to lawyer stuff. Leave math and baseless accusations to the professionals."

Shitty cackles. "Look at you two and your airtight fuckin' defense. Alright, _fine_. Maybe I'm wrong." He hops off the counter. "But, off the record, I am _not_ wrong, and I am also very proud of you. And I owe Lardo ten bucks." He heads for the living room and adds, "And, _extra_ off the record: if you don't keep it the fuck down next time, I'm gonna stop being so courteous with _my_ noise levels and then we're _all_ gonna be miserable."

"No idea what you're talking about," Jack calls after him, and Bitty comes up behind him and kisses the back of his arm.

" _Next time_ ," he whispers. "That's nice of him to assume."

"Is he wrong?"

Bitty stands on tip toe and kisses the back of his neck. "Nope."

 

 

The next week, Bitty tweets asking the best way to shame someone who is a giant into not hogging the blankets, and Kent favourites it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i read a lot about jack & parse doing all kinds of debauched sex stuff when they were together but when i was 18 i was a macho doofus and bad in bed so i like to imagine they were really awkward but they thought they were being so sexy.
> 
> also, [cherryfizzies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryfizzies) and [ficteer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ficteer/pseuds/ficteer) bullied me into (ie: asked me once, very politely) to write an alternate version where bitty ends up with parse and i'm curious so i'm gonna do that, but i know a lot of people don't like that (please don't talk to me about how you don't like it) so i'll probably write it as another in the 'series' and not as a final chapter to this, so it's properly tagged n shit. so get ready for THAT.
> 
> UPDATE: alternate bitty/parse ending is now part 2 to this series, and is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4750046)
> 
> [tumblr](http://ronibravo.tumblr.com)


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